


be all, end all

by josiebelladonna



Series: now it's dark [3]
Category: Anthrax (US Band), Bandom, Metallica, Soundgarden (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Alternate Universe - Noir, Alternate Universe - Steampunk, Biology, Biopunk, Cold Weather, Cross-Posted on Wattpad, Cybercrimes, Cybernetics, Cyberpunk, Dark Comedy, Dark Magic, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, F/M, Film Noir, Hospitals, Joey and Lars are pissed and a couple of hot messes, Mad Science, Multi, New York, New York City, Science Fiction, Seattle, Surgery, freezing in fact, very cold
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:07:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 33,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22037530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josiebelladonna/pseuds/josiebelladonna
Summary: **book three***The explosive ending to the trilogy, with corruption in every worst way, cybercrimes, the tour de force of evolution, and a ferocious solo album. Can Joey and Lars figure it out and save Maya and her sister before it's too late?
Relationships: Chris Cornell/Original Female Character, Joey Belladonna/Original Female Character, Matt Cameron/Original Female Character(s)
Series: now it's dark [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1519889





	1. (the last day of recording)

**Author's Note:**

> Happy New Year and New Decade, everyone! Let's rock n' roll  
> And by the way, go check out and support Joey's solo work if you haven't already! He has four albums (Belladonna, Spells of Fear, 03, and Deadly Nightshade) and a collection of demos titled Relics xoxo #thejoeygirls

January 6, 1989. Rochester, New York.  
“Power trip,” I mutter to myself, closing my eyes. “Power trip. Power trip. Power fucking trip.” I have the headphones over my ears and my hands crammed into my pockets as I'm standing before the microphone. Right in front of me is a pane of glass, and behind that is Lars and Kim, the latter of whom flew out here to lay down a couple of guitar tracks for me. He took a few takes but he managed to get it down for me on the tapes here at Music America.  
Lars has his finger resting over the playback button. Even though it's not particularly cold in here, he's got on that big heavy overcoat and that lush vest underneath it. He finally shaved off his beard on New Year's Day, but now he's got kind of a stubble already growing in. He, like me, also neglected to brush his head before he and I drove over here this morning in my piece of crap car.  
I need to my act together, on this song here in particular. It's been almost a week, six full days. Lars managed to book me two weeks after New Year's Day and once he told me about it, I found myself itching to perform. I am in dire need to sing my heart out again. The memory of having sang so hard in Seattle is still etched fresh within my mind and my slim belly, but I have to do this for myself. I don't know any other way to do anything else and I can't picture myself doing anything else for myself.  
Lars plays it back for me. I focus on the words I had written down on that notepad and then memorized. I rinsed out my mouth with a shot of white wine vinegar and a glass of water before coming here. The back of my throat is clean and clear as a bell. It's all there. I just have to do it.  
My voice trembles a little bit, but it's my song, I've always loved to perform, and I've been doing this for years. Why am I so nervous?  
No. I needn't be so hard on myself. I relax the muscles in my chest and down within my stomach, and let myself breathe. I have the music in me. I need to coax it out. I need to do what I did in New Orleans and Boston and just let it dance with me. I'm the leader here.  
I almost want to grip onto the microphone as I feel myself letting go even more. But I know if I do, it'll mess up the recording.  
Instead, I remain standing there with my lips before the head of the microphone, and my eyes pinched shut, and my hands in my pockets.  
I'm doing it. I'm recording my album, this thing that says Joey Belladonna, and not just a short, abrasive demo like what I did in Seattle.  
It's just me. Lars and Kim need not apply here now.  
“SHUT! YOUR! MOUTH!”  
I let out this wail that came from somewhere inside of me, and I don't know if it's a relic of everything that's happened up to this point but it almost surprises me. Never thought a skinny little boy could be so soft, and never though a skinny little boy could have such a raging beast inside of him.  
“SHUT IT! SHUT YOUR FUCKING MOUTH!”  
I don't know where this is coming from. Where is this coming from?  
Ohhhh, I think I know where this is coming from.  
I was left out in the cold by my old band mates.  
I found a girl who was bound at the ankles laying in a storm drain who's been abused and is lying to me about something, maybe everything.  
My best friend is in the hospital right now and has some kind of monstrous cybernetic bullshit literally sprouting out from his body.  
There might be something sinister lurking about in the background and I don't have a clue what it is or what it wants from me and Lars. It might want to kill me.  
“POWER TRIP! POWER TRIP! P O W E R T R I P!”  
I feel myself straining and closing up. My stomach is aching me again, but I don't care. I've got it. I've got it! I've got it! I've got it!  
“SHUT! YOUR! M O U T H!”  
And then the playback ends once I finish out that final note.  
“WOW!” I hear Kim shout on the other side of the glass; this is a sound proof room, too, it's amazing I can hear him say that. I take off the headphones as he and Lars stand to their feet to give me a standing ovation. I rub my eyes and my face, and then run my fingers through my black curls before stepping away from the sound booth. I'm sore again and I need some water.  
I step out of there and meet up with Lars and Kim at the sound board.  
“That was unreal!” Lars declares, giving his long hair a toss back from his broad shoulders.  
“I can't remember the last time I sang like that,” I confess to them, my voice hoarse. “Good thing we got that, too. Did you?”  
“I did, yes!” he says with glee. “We can use this next week to master and mix it, too.”  
“God—I don't think Chris ever sang that hard,” Kim admits to me, returning to his seat there next to Lars.  
“Sang so hard that he lost his voice?” I ask him, feeling my voice break some more.  
“Not at all. He has hit some pretty intense notes in the past, like when Soundgarden was starting out, but nothing of your caliber, though. That just—holy shit, dude.”  
“Can I get some water here?” I ask them, clearing my throat.  
“I'll get it,” Lars offers me. He stands to his feet and crosses the room to the door. He disappears for a moment, only for us to hear a familiar woman's voice out there in the next room.  
He then returns with a little paper cup of cold water and a Sonia right behind him.  
“Sonia! What're you doing here?” I greet her as Lars hands me the water. “I thought you and Marcia were in Portland.”  
“A little bird told me,” she begins, adjusting her kinky dark hair, “that Joey was singing his heart out and recording an album near mine and my sister's upholstery place, and I don't have classes on Fridays, so I just had to fly out here to check it out. I also wanted to invite you boys to a stage production I'm doing in a couple of weeks back home.”  
“Oh?” I raise my eyebrows at that as I bring the cup to my lips.  
“Yeah, A Midsummer's Night Dream. I'm playing the part of Titania, the Queen of the Fairies.”  
“Oh, well,” Kim smartly notes, “your Highness.”  
Lars and I bow our heads towards her and she giggles at us. I then turn to him.  
“Anyways, you got the tape?”  
“'Bout to lock it up in a safe place for you, my Indian friend. It is five thirty after all.”  
“Holy hell, is it really?” I gape at him.  
“Yeah. You've been singing for almost seven hours. You've gotta be beat or at least hungry.”  
“Beat or hungry, but not both?”  
“Okay, beat or hungry, or perhaps both.”  
He ducks behind the sound board to fetch the tape.  
“I'm gonna put it in a place where both you and I can remember it well enough,” he tells me, closing the door.  
“Sorry, what were we talking about?” I couldn't help that.  
“Joey!” he scoffs.  
“What? I lost my voice and you're both my partner in crime and my producer—I'm entitled to a joke once in a while, Jesus Christ.”  
Meanwhile, Kim and Sonia both chuckle at us.  
“You guys,” she quips at us.  
“It's like me and Chris,” he joins in.  
“It's like me and Marcia,” she adds. “Anyways, shall we go over to Snarky's?”  
“Bit of a drive, though,” I remind her, “but—it's a nice evening right now and we're not supposed to get snow for another couple of days. I don't see why not.”  
I take one final drink of water when I hear the jingle of some keys.  
“Oh, boy, I get a lock and key!” I declare. Lars stands to his feet from the far right side of the sound board.  
“Belladonna is in a safe spot,” he tells me, running his fingers through his hair. And then he rubs his hands together. “Okay, now let's get loaded up into the car—I assume we're taking your car, Kim?”  
“I don't see why not,” he replies with a shrug. “Unless Sonia has one with her.”  
“Nah, I took a cab over here. Let's get loaded into the car.”  
“Alright, we're gonna get loaded!” I declare again and that coaxes a laugh out of Lars. “Okay, I'll stop now.”  
We head out of the actual studio into the front room, the last nugget of warmth for a little bit. I can make out the final rays of setting sun from through the glass in the front door: the sky has painted itself a rich indigo color. I close the lapels of my peacoat at the sight of it, but I also regret not wearing my leather right now. Before we step outside to the frigid cold clear evening, Sonia turns towards me with a mischievous smirk on her face.  
“What?” I ask her, clearing my throat again.  
“It almost amazes me how strong your voice is,” she remarks in a low voice.  
“Well, it kinda has to be,” I point out, “you know, if I'm gonna be going at this whole thing by my lonesome. I need my voice to be able to slice through steel.”  
Lars pushes open the front door first and we're greeted with an onslaught of that cold left over from the snow and the freezing rain. I'm the last one out of the building but surely I can't be the first one to catch a glimpse of the glimmers of neon hovering over the towering apartment complexes. I recognize those smooth metallic sides, even in the fading sunlight. I count four of them.  
So Maxwell Industries has drones floating around in the Rochester skyline now, which is experiencing the first sprouts of blue neon.  
I can only hope one of them isn't carrying a nuke.


	2. (sonia's wonderland)

January 6, 1989. Syracuse, New York.  
It's another hour before we reach Snarky's and at that point, I am indeed growing hungry. It's been a long day there in the studio, a long day of me shrieking my voice out only to have karma catch up on me. The whole way there I had to clear my throat every other few minutes because I worked so hard back there. I also have my hands resting upon my stomach, not just out of hunger but from the fact I worked those sore muscles once again. At least this time I didn't go over the edge like last time.  
Kim pulls into the parking spot before the front door and there's a few people inside of there. As I climb out, a chill runs down my spine. I take a look up at the inky black sky: there's something about looking at all of those stars overhead that's bothering me. I don't know if it's the fact all the neon Lars and I have been seeing as of late, but I'm sure something is moving about up there. All the neon from across the lake and up in Seattle is starting to burn into my memory.  
I think we're safe, though, as we're heading inside of the little warm lit restaurant.  
Four spots at the counter are open for the four of us.  
My stomach is still sore from singing so hard all day, or perhaps it's from hunger. Or both.  
I'm sitting next to Sonia as she peels off her coat and drapes it over the top of her chair. She turns her head to show me a small little smile.  
“I just realized I never got the chance to actually get to know you, Joey,” she starts off. “I got to know your friends, but not you, though.”  
I shrug at her as I lean over the surface of the counter.  
“I'm just a guy, whaddya want,” I tell her, and she giggles at me.  
She, Kim, and I ask for cups of coffee to start things off, while Lars is the odd man out with his love of black tea. We're silent for a moment before she speaks up to me again.  
“So do you miss being in a band?”  
I take a good long look at her as she folds her arms over the counter top and huddles a little bit closer to me.  
“Do I miss being in a band? All the time. It's a weird feeling being in a band and then finding yourself all alone.”  
Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Lars nodding his head as he's sipping his cup of tea.  
“It's part of why I'm doing this solo album,” I continue, “I've got to do something with myself. I'm a singer and a musician. Even with very little money, I feel that if I do nothing, what I do and what I feel I can do goes down the tubes. You know, I can't just twiddle my thumbs and play hockey whenever I feel like it, especially with my goalie in the hospital.”  
“I'm not the best stand in, either,” Lars adds, bringing his mug to his mouth.  
“Hey, you did good that time, man,” I assure him, lifting my head so he can better hear me. “I mean that, too. Not too shabby for doing it on an injured knee, either.” I return my attention to Sonia as she's tilting her head to the side, like she's checking out my face and my neck. She takes a sip of her blond coffee while never taking her eyes off of me.  
I think back to after she took Brick to the hospital not too far from here and she and I had that encounter together. I wonder if she even remembers doing that.  
She tucks a lock of wavy hair behind her ear and then rotates her body towards me. Her slender knees are right up against my right thigh.  
“If you boys excuse me,” she informs us, “I have to use the ladies' room.”  
I watch the tip of her tongue slither out from in between her lips at me. Her lips meanwhile, look smooth and buttery, as if they're ready to kiss me. She climbs off of the chair and ambles around me and the side of the counter towards the corridor leading her back to the bathrooms. I watch her until she ducks out of sight. That slim figure of hers is beckoning me.  
I take another sip of coffee before I slither out of my seat without excusing myself: Kim and Lars, meanwhile, are focused upon each other in a conversation about something. I follow her path back to the ladies' room: I find she's still standing there in the hallway. She didn't even go inside, like she's waiting for me. I raise my eyebrows at her.  
“Well?” I ask her. “Aren't you going in?”  
“Not before I give you what you're coming for,” she replies in a velvety whisper. She clutches at my chest and pushes me back towards the janitor's closet there at the end of the hallway. The door swings open and I almost lose my balance stumbling in there. But I catch myself against the wall opposite the doorway, just in time to catch her closing the door behind her with her hip.  
It's dark in here, except for the faint sliver of light from underneath the door. I feel her hands fondling me down my chest and my sore hungry stomach, and lifting up the hem of my shirt. I feel her caressing me around the waist. I relax at the sensation.  
“God, it's like you know where to touch me,” I whisper to her, running my hand up her back.  
“Hush,” she hisses into my face, and then she plants a kiss on my lips. Her fingers glide down my hips and over the curvature of my ass. I feel her fingers squeeze me, which coaxes a bite of the lip from me. I reach up her back to feel around for the hooks on her bra but I can't feel it. Either she's not wearing one or they're right in front of me.  
Time to improvise.  
I take my other hand and plant it on the crotch of her jeans. She's warm. Now if I can just reach down for a little fingering we can get this party started more.  
“Take off my pants,” I command to her in a hushed voice.  
“Of course—” She presses her chest against mine and I feel her nipples hardening on the inside of her shirt. Yeah, she's definitely not wearing a bra.  
I feel her fingers on the button of my jeans, and then she unzips me. Even though it's dark, I know she can tell what's between the legs and what's right in front of her face. She lets out a quiet gasp.  
“Yes?” I ask her, pressing my back against the wall.  
“You're so—”  
“Yes?”  
“You're so—” I feel her fingers on my bare skin and the little sprigs of hair there, from my belly button downward. She's gentle and delicate, but then she brings her lips onto me, right under my belly button, and my knees almost buckle from her touch.  
“You're so—” she repeats in between kisses. “You're so—oh, dear.”  
“Wha?”  
“You're already dribbling a little bit. Come on now.”  
I've got my teeth on my bottom lip. I can't be trickling already. Amazing she can even see it from the darkness in here!  
She runs her fingers down my shaft, a feeling that sends waves of shivers down my spine.  
“Come on now,” she encourages me, keeping her voice a light whisper, “control yourself, Joey. Oh, my God—you bad boy.”  
“Don't—tell—your sister—please,” I whisper to her as I brace my hips against the wall. It's difficult but I have to hold still for her.  
“Gladly.” She touches me there again. It's quite the daunting task, trying to hold still with my back up against the wall and deny it from myself, but she wants me to do it so what do I have to lose?  
She touches me again, and again, a dainty little touch on my skin.  
“Come on—come on—” she encourages me again, like a little coach inflicting even more agony onto me. I hate this, and yet she's stroking me down. And then she holds onto me. I guess I'm getting big.  
“Let me stop you right there,” she whispers into my face. “Don't even think about it—”  
“But—”  
“No.” I feel her finger on my lips, stopping me right there in my place. “You're in Sonia's wonderland now. I'm gonna make you suffer if you come right here while I'm trying to figure you out some more. I'm gonna make you die screaming if you don't let me get inside of you, Joey. Now—hold your petit mort for Mama, baby boy.”  
I purse my lips as she lowers her finger from there. I clear my throat from the clash of the whisper and my broken voice.  
And then I feel her lips on my lower belly again. Oh. Oh, good God damn. She's kissing me all the way down my happy trail. I've got my back against the wall and my hips rigid as her soft smooth lips caress over my skin.  
“God—” she whispers. “I love a good happy trail on a boy.” It's driving me insane. The tips of her fingers again stroke my skin. I'm trying to hold still, but I feel my hips wanting to buck forth. But I have to keep it together.  
I feel like I'm about ready to explode as she reaches my shaft again. I clinch my fists as her lips press there. I wonder how deep she'll go as she lifts her head again.  
I feel her fingers slither into the roots of my hair at the back of my head. She gives me a tug.  
“Don't even think about it,” she hums into my face: her voice is velvety and smooth like a cup of Mexican hot chocolate. I'm trying so hard not to think about it as she tugs my hair again. She kisses all the way down the side of my neck. I want to touch her but I don't think I can have a chance at the moment when she's got a hold on my hair. When she does let go of my hair, she returns to my waist again.  
This is turning into torture! I want to let loose but she's got a hold on me with those soft lips and those gentle fingers. She reaches my shaft again, and again with her lips. She reaches the end and I feel her lips pursing down on me. She's doing it.  
I feel her tongue on the side. I want to let go. I want to do... that thing that she said, but I have to keep it together. She wants me to keep it together.  
It feels as though my chest is about to explode. And then I realize I've been holding my breath this whole time.  
I let out a long low whistle in order to better breathe. I breathe in through my parted lips and let it in, all the way into my lungs and down my body. I start to relax as she goes even deeper. I want to groan out but I can only imagine someone walking down the hall outside and hearing me.  
Then I hear something unzip.  
I feel something rough rubbing onto me.  
What—  
Oh. Oh, okay.  
I'm holding still here with my back up against a hard wall as she's doing that. I see how she is now.  
The denim falls over my thighs. I feel her rubbing up against me. I would imagine someone like Lupe or Gwendolyn doing this to me, but I guess I was wrong about Sonia, probably more than how wrong I was about her sister.  
I whimper inside of my throat as she lowers herself over me.  
“Shhhh,” she coos into my face. “Good boy. You're good. You're so good.”  
“Can I—” I whisper to her. “Can I—”  
“You're a good boy,” she breathes back into my face, probably from over her shoulder. She then grips onto me. I don't know where her legs are, and I don't really care either way. She lets me go right there. I let out a pained, stuttered sigh as I feel every inch of my body relax.  
“Feel better?” she asks me.  
“Oh—Oh, my God. That was—that—” I can hardly speak.  
“Let me run across the hall for some paper towels. And then we can go get some dinner.”


	3. (neon ghost lights)

January 6, 1989. Somewhere on Highway 31 between Syracuse and Oswego, New York.  
I'm nestled in the back seat of the car right next to Lars, still with the memory of my encounter with Sonia fresh in my mind. I'm watching her fingers tap on the outer edge of the steering wheel right across from me: every so often, a pair of white headlights shines over her fingers, or there's a bright yellow streetlight on the side of the road that makes her a little more alluring than I had imagined. I've had more than plenty to eat that evening and Sonia was kind enough to drive Lars and I back to Oswego: she has to drive through there anyways with her and Kim returning to Rochester.  
Even though I had had two cups of coffee, I'm finding my eyelids sink lower and lower with the darkness around us. Aside from the blast of warm air in the car heater vents, I'm feeling all warm and soft on the inside again: like receiving a hug from either of my parents or my grandparents. Meanwhile, the two of them are totally silent, and I think Lars fell asleep at some point because I haven't heard a peep from him since we left the northwestern side of Syracuse. The sole sound is coming from the tires underneath the car: the hydrogen generator beneath the seat isn't even making a single noise.  
I lean my head back against the head rest and close my eyes. I have my arms folded over my stomach and my knees knitted together.  
I don't always fall asleep in the car, in fact, it's always been difficult for me to do so, but I do it this time.  
I think it might have been for a mere moment, though, because I open my eyes again, and this time it's to behold the sight of the Oneida River outside of the car window. Since it's dark outside, the meandering waters are smooth and black as nothing. There's the stars on the black sky overhead.  
Everything is black and empty and cavernous.  
Except for the floating bright blue glimmers of light over the river waters.  
Their very presence is making the water down below light up into a dull creeping blue. The scraggly trees out there are lighting up into that exact same soft blue: if I didn't know better, I'd swear something happened at one of the power plants nearby.  
Maybe something did.  
We go around a slight corner and I peer out of Lars' window at the sight of Three Rivers, where the Oneida, the Seneca, and the Oswego make like my brain, my heart, and my genitals and meet up for a battle of wits. There's a whole cluster of those blue lights out there, hovering in silence over the black water.  
I reach to my left to shake Lars awake. He stirs and shudders, so I shake him again.  
“Lars—” I whisper to him. “Lars—wake up.”  
He gasps and stares at me through the blackness: the side of his face is lit up by the back glow of the headlights.  
“Huh? What is it?”  
“Look out there, quick,” I urge him.  
In the dim light, he turns his head to see the lights for him. He lifts himself into an upright position there on the seat for a better view of them before we turn away into the trees.  
“What the hell?”  
“I know.”  
He turns to look at me with his eyebrows knitted together and his lips parted a bit.  
“Those are like the same lights we saw in Rochester that time,” he recalls.  
“I know, right? Except—bigger, brighter, and like—”  
“Ghosts,” he concludes.  
“I was gonna say something straight out from a nuclear plant but that's even better, to be honest.”  
The lights disappear behind the tree line so we can see them for another second longer. But I have the memory of the neon ghost lights tattooed onto my memory. They were so bright and luminous; surely Sonia and Kim saw them. We gape at each other in the darkness because all of this uptick in neon is starting to get serious. Lars leans back in his seat and dozes off again, but I'm wide awake this time. I kind of have to be awake anyways for Sonia.  
We wind our way through the trees a little more and then I recognize the country club, the flowery sign of Black Orchid, and the outer lights of the hockey rink near the Bitters on the outskirts of town. Home sweet home.  
I tell Sonia the way back to my place and once I recognize the gray House of Grey up the block, I wonder just how Brick is doing back down in Syracuse. I should probably give Barney and Billy a ring but the house looks buttoned up for the night.  
“So did either of you see the lights over the rivers earlier?” I ask Sonia and Kim as we pull into the complex driveway.  
“What lights?” Kim sounds genuinely surprised by that.  
“The ghost lights. They were like as bright as day.”  
“I didn't see anything,” Sonia confesses, shaking her head. “Maybe you were dreaming, Joey.”  
“Lars saw them, though,” I point out. “I swear to you, it wasn't a dream.”  
“Then again, the neon is pretty much everywhere,” Kim reminds me as we park near the parking garage. I spot my car on the far end of the row, right behind that same stack of white wires once again. This is too much.  
I fetch up a sigh as I nudge Lars awake again. The two of us thank Sonia and Kim for dinner and for their hospitality, and then I lead him back to my apartment.  
I unlock the door and we're met with a wave of cool air from the ghosts and from the fact we hadn't been home in hours. It's been a long week, it's getting late, and just walking in through the darkness is enough to make me even more exhausted. Maybe it was in fact just a dream.  
Eh. Whatever. I'm going to bed.


	4. (four men and a game of chess)

January 7, 1989. Oswego, New York.  
I awake the next morning to the sound of something shuffling in the next room. I open my eyes and roll over onto my back for a look up at the ceiling. It's like someone's sifting flour through one of those old metallic sieves, but it's so close by that I wonder just where it's coming from.  
I gaze up at the ceiling, at the boards up there, and for a second, I think I see something move but then again, it's probably just my imagination playing tricks on me. The blankets are warm around my body and I really don't want to get out of bed, but that sound is a little odd, especially since I have no idea where it's coming from inside the apartment. Maybe Lars is awake and he's making something for breakfast.  
But I also don't smell anything.  
I close my eyes for a second before I lift myself onto my elbows there in bed. I pick myself up in time to watch her full figure take form. I groan inside of my throat and rub my right eye then my left, and then I push my bangs out of the way to see Nerissa hovering over the foot of the bed.  
“Good morning, my darling,” I tell her; my voice is still broken from yesterday afternoon.  
“The slim and lush boy is awake,” she whispers in a voice so soft, I'd swear it came in on the wind. She shows me that quaint little smile again before drifting closer to me with her hand reaching out for me. Her fingers glide over my face with the touch akin to the edges of feathers. I take a look at her heavy round figure—God, if only she was a real alive woman! I'd want her to call me a good boy for behaving like what Sonia did for me last night.  
Her inky black hair streams behind her even though there's no breeze in here. Even though she's as cold as ice, her ghostly body right over my hips and my chest is enough to make me want to surrender myself to her. She brings her milky lips closer to mine and I brace myself for her touch.  
She glides over my lips, so light and so soft and yet so cold.  
I feel my teeth beginning the first chatters, but I can't resist her.  
She holds onto the other side of my face with her other hand: she's got her knees on my stomach.  
“I wish you were alive,” I confess to her as she gazes into my eyes.  
“I'm alive in your flesh,” she assures me, bowing closer to my face. I close my eyes to better feel her kiss, but it never comes.  
I open my eyes to find she vanished. I let out a low groan and figure now is the time to climb out of bed and figure out what is that noise.  
Chills run up my bare legs but I'll just have one look out to the front of the apartment before I return in here to put on some pants. But I keep my arms close to my body as I poke my head out to the hall. The bathroom is totally dark, and the sole light in the hall in front of me is the gray light coming in from the kitchen and the front room. Maybe Lars is awake.  
I step out of my room and make my way into the front room where I find Lars in fact, sitting cross legged before a black and white checkerboard. On either side of him is Vera and Mr. Lang, both of whom are also sitting cross legged on the floor.  
I rub my eyes again as I amble closer to them. I feel the hair on my legs standing on end from Vera and Mr. Lang's cold ethereal bodies there on the floor.  
“What's going on in here?” I ask Lars. He turns his head and his face lights up at the sight of me.  
“Hey, there he is!” he declares. “You're just in time.”  
“In time for what?”  
“Pretty intense chess game we have going on here,” he explains; meanwhile, Vera and Mr. Lang are more focused on shuffling the frosty and transparent chess pieces on the checkerboard. They're moving the pieces over the board with such haste that it's making that sifting sound.  
“So that's what that noise is,” I remark, pushing a couple of curly tendrils of hair back behind my shoulder.  
“Did it wake you up, too?” he asks me.  
“Yeah! It sounds like someone sifting a shitload of flour right here in my living room.”  
The sight of the board is enough to remind me of Marcia and Sonia and their checkerboard patterns back at their upholstery place. And then, almost out of the blue, I think of Spence. I wonder how he's doing right at the moment given I haven't spoken to him in a while. But I keep my attention on the board there on the floor, right in front of my bare feet and Lars' bare knees, for about another few moments until Mr. Lang moves one of his clear rooks closer to Vera's frosty king.  
“Check mate,” he states to her, and she fetches up a sigh.  
“That's best two out of three, too,” Lars announces to me, holding up two fingers.  
“Man, better luck next time, Vera,” I tell her, folding my arms over my chest. She sighs again before fading out to nothing. Mr. Lang picks up the board from the floor and disappears with it. Lars then gives his hair a toss before looking up at me. I can see him eyeing my ankles, followed by my knees and then my thighs.  
“How do you play such wondrous hockey,” he wonders aloud, “with such skinny legs?”  
I take a look down at my narrow feet, then my slim ankles, and then my knees; when I have my eye on my thighs, I reach down for a feel of them under my pajama shorts.  
“They may be skinny but don't be fooled,” I assure him.  
“Anyways, I was gonna wake you up once they were done and see if you want to get a cup of coffee.”  
I gape at him.  
“I'm out of coffee?” And he slowly nods his head.  
“I also want some tea, too,” he adds.  
“I think Barney and Billy might have some tea laying around at their place,” I assure him. “I have to go over there anyways—see how they're doing. Just—hang tight and let me put some pants on first.”  
“Gladly! I have to get dressed, too. I got too hot sleeping under that blanket with my pants on.”  
Once I help him off of the floor, I double back to my room to change my clothes. As I'm searching around for a clean shirt or a sweatshirt of some sort, something at the back of the closet catches my eye. I reach past my hockey jersey and a couple of my sweaters to find it's that checkerboard top Marcia and Sonia had given me.  
Ah, yes. That thing that's more of a belly shirt on me than that leopard print blouse I borrowed from my aunt when I auditioned for Anthrax.  
After everything that's happened, I need to cut those girls a break. Marcia is hell of a baker and Sonia likes me. And they made me and Lars both shirts and matching pants! But it's been so cold that I haven't been able to wear this thing. But then again, I can always sneak it under something else. And I do: I fasten the buttons and then slip on a black sweatshirt, followed by those tight jeans I've had for years.  
Once I have my boots on, Lars enters the doorway right then, wrapped in that big coat of his and with his gloves in one hand.  
“You know, I've been thinking about everything we know about Maya and Candace so far,” he begins.  
“Uh-huh?”  
“You don't think Maya's hiding something about all of the technological advances, do you?”  
“Why would she do that?” I straighten myself upright on the edge of my bed and run my fingers through one side of my hair.  
“Well, she and Candace come from a rather dreadful household—an abusive stepfather, a distant stepmother—Candace was more than willing to give us some gold nuggets of truth. Maybe there's something Maya knows that she doesn't, like maybe she knows some secrets about it all.”  
I pause for a moment.  
“That could very well be,” I agree with him, “and maybe their 'surgeries'—” I make quotation marks with my fingers. “—were a mechanism of keeping them quiet. Maybe that's why Brick is in the hospital!”  
“Yes! Exactly!”  
“Okay—” I stand to my feet and pause again, this time to the sight of the gloves in his hand. “Are those yours or mine?”  
“They're mine. I believe yours are in your coat pocket.”  
I amble over to the closet again, this time for my coat. And those leather gloves Ellen gave me are in fact in the right pocket. Once they're on my hands, I lead Lars out of the apartment with the key in my pocket.  
It's a cold blustery day here on the shores of Lake Ontario, one that might beckon some snow some time in the next few days or so. I can feel it in the frigid wind, like it's cutting all the way down to my bones. But there isn't a heavy looking dark cloud in the hazy gray sky overhead so maybe it's just me at the moment. I hunker down inside of my coat as the wind is blowing through my black curls and blowing some of them into my face. I lead Lars up the street towards the House of Grey, and I notice the front windows are lit up.  
They're home. I reach the front step first for a knock on the door with the first two knuckles of my leather bound hand.  
A brief pause.  
Then the door opens to reveal Billy, who's looking tired but glad to see me.  
“Hey, Joey! And Lars!”  
“Hey, Bill, how ya doin'?” I greet him, shivering inside of my coat.  
“Beat. We were just talking about you guys, too—come on in.”  
Lars and I step into their warm house, which smells of bacon, eggs, and fresh coffee much to my delight. Barney's at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee in one hand.  
“There they are,” he declares as he takes a sip.  
I take off my coat and hang it up on the hook next to the door. Lars opens his mouth to say something when Barney interrupts him with a question at me.  
“Did you get our call this morning?”  
“You called me?” I raise an eyebrow at that.  
“Yeah, at like six thirty,” Billy answers.  
I was out like a light last night, but I know I would have heard the phone ring if it did.  
“The phone never rang,” I recall for them before I turn to Lars. “Did you hear the phone ring?” He shakes his head, looking just as baffled as me.  
“Well, we called to say that your old band mates,” Barney continues, “—Anthrax.”  
“What about them?”  
He grits his teeth before pursing his lips together.  
“—they are all in the hospital right now with Brick.”  
“They're—They're down in Syracuse?” I sputter out, and Barney nods his head with his eyes wide and his expression grim. I glance over at Lars and the concerned expression on his face.  
“Well, what're they doing there?” I demand to him.  
“No idea. But their singer—John, is his name?”  
“Yeah, John.”  
“John Bush,” Lars fills in.  
“He called us real late last night,” Billy joins in, “saying the four of them collapsed—literally collapsed, like fainted—one right after the other. They had been feeling exhausted all day, like not being able to play and everything and then their skin got all washed out, like they were sick, and they fell like a bunch of dominoes. But the rest of the team's been feeling okay, though. Everyone's stumped.”  
“Nothing's growing out of their bodies like with him,” Barney adds. “But it's kind of the same thing he's dealing with.”  
And it'll probably be a matter of time before things do start growing out of them. Whatever is wrong with the four of them is the same thing that's wrong with Brick and with Maya. It won't be long. Whatever this is it's got to do with all of the cybernetic nonsense that's surrounding us. The fact neither Lars nor myself have figured out what it is of yet makes me wonder even more about it. Surely there has to be a connection.  
I take a look over at Lars, who's got his tongue poking out from between his lips. He's got a look of determination in his eye.  
“We were actually just gonna go to church,” Billy tells me out of the blue, which takes me aback.  
“Go to church? Why?”  
“It’s Saturday, too,” Lars points out.  
“We're scared for Brick,” Billy confesses. “We were actually gonna go down to Syracuse to visit him again after breakfast and then head off for a prayer or two. You guys can join us if you'd like.”  
I take another look over at Lars, and I know what he's thinking.  
Let the game of chess begin, I say.


	5. (back to the church corridor)

_January 7, 1989. Syracuse, New York_.

We're not too far from the hospital that Brick and Anthrax are staying in, I know that much. That church Lars and I had landed in on New Year's Eve looks a lot brighter and more sinister with the morning sun shining down on it. There's a pair of sharp, pointed turrets near the back of the high rising cone shaped roof; stained glass windows are glaring even with the gray light casting down upon them. Even though it's Saturday, I swear I catch the sound of the bell ringing and the organ inside playing a hymn. The two of us are standing right outside of Barney and Billy's car with our heavy coats and our mirrored sunglasses: the breeze picks up again and sends a chill down my spine.

There's something about this church here: it could be from the lights on the inside to the obits on the bulletin board in the front corridor there. But staring up at those high terraces gives me a feeling I don't want to know. It could be from all of the little shadows here and there, or the fact that it's rising up so high up, higher than we had seen the week before.

“Shall we?” Lars asks me over the creak of the tree branches behind us.

“Hm?”

“Shall we follow them?”

“Sure.”

To be honest, I don't really want to come here to this church again. The neon signs in there next to the cross up on the wall give me another odd feeling. But there's got to be something here that can help us. I can feel it. I can feel that Lars and I are on the brink of something big.

The two of us follow Barney and Billy across the parking lot, and towards the front steps, and those glass doors. The only light in here is from the faint sunlight outside. No candles are lit. I feel nervous.

Meanwhile, up ahead, Barney and Billy themselves have reached that one pair of doors and are about to go inside, but it looks like they're waiting for us.

I take off my sunglasses to have a better look about the dark church corridor and to glance over at Lars. He had already taken off his, and he's looking at something in front of us. I follow his gaze to find he's looking at the bulletin board again.

“That obit is still there,” he declares, and I turn back to him. “The one about Janet Snow.”

“Shall we take it?” I suggest to him.

“I don't see why not. Something tells me it's been up there a while.”

Indeed, I amble over to the board and lift the push pin off the top of the paper, and fold it up before putting it into my coat pocket.

“Come on, let's go—” I coax him and we walk down the corridor to where Barney and Billy are standing.

“What was that?” the latter asks me once we're within earshot.

“Obituary,” I answer. “Little something that could probably be of use to us.”

“We were also waiting for you guys,” Barney pipes up, “because we wanted to show you something.”

He points into the actual room itself and I turn my head.

It's dark in here, except for those neon lights on the wall next to the cross, shining bright blue like the ghost lights over Three Rivers. Mine and Lars' names are lit up like a New Year celebration itself. I look over at Lars himself, whose eyes are widening and his mouth hanging agape at the sight of the lights.

“What the hell—” he breathes out.

Something catches my eye and I take a look up at the rafters. It's like the rafters in Grand Central, with those tatters of lace dangling down from the arches, but with more neon. Far more neon. I follow the shape of some of the lights right above our heads. They're spelling out words. Words I can't exactly read right there.

I take a couple of steps forward and turn around, with my head tilted back to better read it.

“Shut the fuck up,” Lars continues on in that same breathy voice, and I realize he's trying to figure the same thing out for himself.

“'Remember the last,'” I read aloud. “'Save your people.' My people?”

“Talking about—Anthrax?” Billy asks me. “The Iroquois?”

“Wait a minute, there's something else here—” I hold up a hand to stop him. I read some more of those letters up there on the rafters. They're all in such bright blue and I have my head tilted back so far that it's difficult to breathe right.

But shielding my eyes I can better read it all.

“'Cry—for—the Indians.'”

“And then 'save your people.'”

I lower my head and reach into my pocket for that obituary. I unfold it to give it another read.

Not only was Janet Snow, or Mrs. Snow, at least I can only guess that it is, a clergical nurse but she was a nurse on that Iroquois reservation my grandfather worked at. It's probably the same reservation Maya and Candace wanted to go to. I don't have my pocket knife with me, but I don't think I'll need it at the moment.

“Yeah, it's—talking about the Iroquois,” Lars concludes, “is it not?”

“It is,” I reply to him. “I think it's a sign, too. But why? And from who?”

“Probably have to find out?” Barney suggests to me.

“Do you remember where it is?” Billy adds to it.

“Sorta. I think we need to do some more snooping there. Me and Lars both.”

“But what about Brick?” Billy demands to me.

“Yeah, and we came here for a prayer, too,” Barney joins in.

“This can probably help us figure things out about Brick,” I assure to them. “And if I'm going to say a prayer, I'm gonna do it in my own home, God damn it. I've seen enough, let's go—”

“Dude, I have the key,” Billy declares.

“Then give it up,” Lars commands him.

“Yeah, gimme it,” I order him. “You guys can stay here and pray 'til the cows come home, and Lars and I can dig around at that old Iroquois reservation.”

“We came here for our friend,” Barney points out, stepping forward with his hands to his hips like he's trying to mad-dog me, “and for your friend, Joey. We ain't leavin', either. Why should we listen to you?”

“Because I'm your team captain and I asked you to,” I tell him, raising my voice just enough for it to echo over the pews. Indeed, I put my hands on my hips so my chest is poking out a bit towards them. “And Brick and Anthrax are gonna need a shitload more than a few measly little prayers from two brothers who refuse to abide by what I'm telling them, now give me the fucking key.”

They glance at each other with their eyebrows raised, and then, Billy reaches into his coat pocket for the car key and hands it to me.

“Okay. Thank you,” I tell him, taking the key.

“Besides, it's not like we'll wreck your car anyways,” Lars scoffs at them.

“Lars, don't. Don't. Just—follow me—”


	6. (an old reservation)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _“On reservations,  
>  a hopeless situation.  
> Respect is something that you earn:  
> our Indian brothers [and sisters] getting burned.  
> Original American, turned into second class citizen.” _  
> -”Indians”, Anthrax (of course!)__

_January 7, 1989. Somewhere outside of Syracuse, New York_.

“This damn—God, I could never figure out their stupid car. God—”

I'm struggling to keep the car in gear as we're heading on over to the nearby reservation. The transmission likes to slip every once in a while and I never really learned to drive a stick shift on top of this. Meanwhile, I'm also trying to remember just where the place is—it's right outside of town, I know that much. Meanwhile, Lars is there in the front seat right next to me with his elbow on the top of the door and with the back of his hand pressed against his mouth. Granted, there's not much he can do but the least he can do is move around in the seat.

I'm about to lose it when I finally bring it into gear and we're moving at a normal pace. Once we're on the freeway, Lars lowers his hand from his mouth.

I can't hardly get that neon out of my mind. One thing I want to know is who, or what, put those letters up there on the wall and on the ceiling, and arrange them in such a way for both Lars and me to find them. It almost doesn't make any sense.

I spot a sign leading us over to the reservation and I take the next exit.

“So tell me about this place,” Lars pipes up once we're off of the freeway. “Like I know you're Iroquois and everything.”

“My grandpa used to work here,” I explain to him. “My parents used to take me here when I was a little kid but I never saw anything fancy about it, especially since I always got called 'Injun' while I was in school.”

“Wow. Must've been difficult.”

“Somewhat. On one hand, it's part of why I always kept to myself when I was that age. You know, if I'm gonna be labeled the Injun kid, I don't really want to bring attention to myself. The bastard child of the Native Americans and the Italians. But on the other hand, I never really wanted to hide my face, though—I always reacted to the judgments with a bit of sass. Hockey really helped me out with that.”

He clears his throat.

“You know, when I was in Danish school, the kids always made fun of my round face.”

“Really?” I raise my eyebrows at that.

“Yeah—it wasn't exactly bullying, I would call it, but it was enough to do its damage upon me, though. Because upon every time I look in the mirror, I always think I have like a triple chin or my cheeks are too bloated up.”

“Jesus. Triple chin, really?”

“Yeah.” I glance over at him in time to catch him fingering at the skin underneath his chin with a fretful look upon his face. “I cannot be too round otherwise I am too gross, as seen by my divorce. You know? Sometimes I wish I was as thin as you.”

“See, I'm the exact opposite,” I confess to him as we're winding our way through the lush evergreens. “I've always been very skinny, like I think the one time I was ever considered chubby was when I was a baby. No matter how much I eat, or what I eat, I can't seem to gain a pound, especially in my muscles. And I don't know about Denmark but I know up here it's crazy cold with the lake effect.”

“It gets particularly cold, but we also get almost twenty hours of darkness this time of year—especially around the solstice.”

“I can't imagine that,” I confess to him in a low voice; the flag of the Onondaga Nation rises up through the trees right then. Soon we reach the nearly vacant gravel parking lot, nearly vacant aside from the camper over on the far side of the lot next to a wheelbarrow filled with more of those same white wires and a stacked pile of metal gears. I take the spot closest to the entrance.

“May you always be a stud, Joey,” Lars tells me as I set my hand on the key. I kill the engine right then.

“And may you always be a doll, Lars,” I retort to him.

I have a quiet rumble in my belly as I climb out of the car and feel the rush of the cold wind blowing through the roots of my curls once again. The sun is still lingering behind the veil of gray clouds up in the sky.

I'm a partial breed Injun man standing on hallowed ground. I gaze up at the flag waving in the wind and close my eyes for a second. I am as old as time itself for a second. A part of the earth. Breathing in the wind blowing before me.

I open my eyes and take a glimpse over at Lars as he's standing before the passenger side of the car with his shades on and his hair billowing back from his head.

“Alright, let's make this quick, I'm getting hungry,” I confess to him, adjusting the lapels of my coat.

“Me, too—and this is Barney and Billy's car, too.”

“Ehhhh—they could use the break.”

I lead him over to the low stone walls surrounding the front entrance; before me stands a tall evergreen tree decorated with fake butterflies. Behind that is a stretch of grass and a series of buildings, all of which appear to be boarded up and closed. I take a look to my left at the sight of another stretch of grass and what looks like an outhouse. To the right is something that looks like a well.

Lars has walked ahead towards the tree, but I notice he's rounding it and heading towards some of the buildings in the background. I follow him with my hands inside of my coat pockets.

Once we clear our way around the tree, I spot an open shed of sorts on the other side of the grass. Maybe, just maybe, I can find something to eat there.

While he keeps on walking towards a shed in front of us, I take the next pathway towards that shed in particular. But as I come closer, I don't exactly find things to eat on the front counters. Rather, I'm finding some wire cutters, a pair of soldering irons, some green board looking things with dark lights and stuff covering their surface, and three rolls of paper.

I pick out the first one on the top of the trio and unfurl it over the counter. It's a blueprint: up top, it's blank but I can tell by the cross in the middle of the paper what this is that I'm looking at.

I reach for the one on the left and unfurl it to find **MAXWELL INDUSTRIES** imprinted up top. The third one has a radiation symbol in the upper right corner. I squirm at the sight of that symbol, especially when I recognize the shape of the objects on the paper there.

“What'd you find?” Lars asks from behind me.

“There's plans here to build a church and a headquarters for Maxwell Industries,” I explain, curling the papers back up and laying them there on the counter top. “Plans for a place to build drones that carry nukes, too. And actual nukes, too.”

“Oh, my God,” he remarks.

“Yeah. That last thing scares me, too. Especially after seeing that one drone in Boston.”

“Anyways, I came over here to tell you that one of the sheds over here—” I turn to find him pointing to the far side of the reservation, at those boarded up sheds. “—is a mausoleum.”

“There's a mausoleum here?”

“It has an epitaph on the front door. I could not exactly read it because the wood's been beat to hell, but I knew what it was the second I saw it.”

“Why is it boarded up, though?”

I stop as I return my attention to the shed before us. Brick's in the hospital. Anthrax is in the hospital. The neon in the church. All of it.

I think I know what this is now. This is starting to make sense now.

“Of course,” I mutter aloud. “Of course.”

“Of course?” he echoes.

“I know what this is,” I tell him. “I know what all of this is. It's a warning. It's a warning to me.”

“Hang on, hang on—” I return my attention to him pointing at what looks like wisps of white smoke slithering out over the grass. But I poke my head out for a better look to find there's no fire around here. I also can't smell anything.

“What is this?” he wonders aloud. I take a look up to the overcast sky as the white smoke floats up. It's collecting and creating a thick cloud as it rises towards the clouds. In the wake of the morning sun, it's creating a rather bright glare. So bright that it makes me wince at the very sight of it.

“Steam,” I answer. But I take a closer look to find it's not coming from any given place. Nothing's on fire. Rather—

“Coming—” he stammers, “out of—thin air—”

And I know where it's coming from.

“Steam—from Boston.”

He takes off his sunglasses to give me a horrified look.

“That can't be good,” I remark.

“It's not,” he whispers to me. “We're fucked. Let's get out of here.”


	7. (a broken wormhole)

“The wormholes are moving,” Lars stammers as we make our way back to the freeway.

“The hell they are,” I follow up with that. “And surely, if they're moving, something else in Boston is keeping that one open.”

“What're we gonna do, though?” he demands to me.

“I have no idea.” My mind is blank and I'm totally lost, as if I wasn't already lost.

“Are you sure it's a warning?”

“Positive. Think about it, Lars. Just... think about this for a minute.”

He listens to me with intent. “—Brick is in the hospital.” I point out my thumb.

“—Anthrax is in the hospital—” My index finger.

“—all the signs in the church pointed us to the reservation, a place that my grandpa used to work at—” My middle finger.

“—I wasn't able to find my pocket knife for a while, either, and I finally did find it in Angeline's office.” My ring finger. “This isn't just some conspiracy theory against Brick—this is a warning against me.” I gesture at myself. “Who or what that wants to kill me is another question entirely, though. And why is beyond me.”

“Not just you, either!” he declares, his voice breaking.

“Huh?”

“My name was in the church, too! Whoever's out to get you is out to get me, too!”

“Shit.”

“Hang on, hang on, stop the car.”

“Why?”

“Just stop the car!” he exclaims.

I tap on the brakes and pull over to the side of the road: the gears of the transmission make a loud cacophonous noise upon coming to a halt underneath a scraggly oak tree. The engine revs high, but I manage to shift it down into neutral and tug on the parking brake.

“I asked you to stop because I feel like we're letting adrenaline get the best of us,” he explains.

I sigh and relax every inch of my body. “Okay,” I begin, but I turn to the dashboard before us. “Want me to kill the engine, too?”

“Not really,” he confesses with a shrug. “Unless you want to.”

I turn the key and the car switches off, leaving us in silence.

“Okay,” he begins again, closing his eyes. “I feel like whatever is out for us is also out for Maya. She's suffering from the same condition as Brick and Anthrax.”

“You don't think whatever happened in the house of Morlente has to do with it?” I ask him.

“Perhaps. But it could also be a distraction. Remember what Candace said about Maya.”

“Good at diversions.”

“Right. So—I would think anyways—that whatever is happening there might be correlated to what's going on over here. But I don't believe we have enough to make that conclusion as of yet because we also have Seattle and Portland to account for, but who knows what's going on there.”

“Okay. Wait a minute, though.”

“What?”

“Since you mentioned something in Boston is probably keeping that one open because of the smoke—steam—whatever the hell it is, what do you think could keep it open?”

“Well, let's think about it for a minute,” he suggests in a calm tone. “The wormholes are pitch dark and like the equivalent of being suffocated even with such a skinny stature such as yourself. They're also very dry. When I opened the one in Black Orchid for you, was it dry in there?”

“It was.”

“Now, the one in New Orleans—during the hurricane—it flooded.”

“And it was raining in Rochester, too, so Molly overheard us that one time. If that one is opened up to Boston, surely there's another one opened—”

He stops me.

“Oh, my gracious God, my place!” I yell out, mortified.

“Not just your place but the house of Grey, the subways in New York, Smell the Magic, Seattle, Portland—the whole focking place is littered in wormholes! Places that are dark and wet, no less.”

“Places that are wet?” I follow along. The whole thing just sounds odd to me. “My apartment is not wet.”

“Yes, but,” he continues, raising a finger at me; he raises his eyebrows behind the rims of his sunglasses, “—where have you gone since I lent you the arrowhead?”

“Let's see—” I think back to the day he let me borrow the arrowhead. “Portland, Seattle, and I think your place down in New Orleans. Places that are wet.”

“Places that are very, very wet, but your apartment is dry, so I think—I think, anyways?—you're spared, Joey.”

I fetch up a quiet sigh in order to calm down my heart. This is too much.

“My place is dry. It shouldn't be wet.”

“Ah, shit.”

“What?”

“Maya—swiped it from me one time.”

“She took it from you?”

“The hell she did!”

“When?”

“After the accident and she picked me up in the Bronx, and took me home. And then she took it—”

“Do you know where she went, though?”

“I'd think Boston? But I have no idea.”

“Well, there was no steam in your apartment, so I'm not sure how that would work now that I think about it.”

“Just so long as my place isn't wet, I think we'll be fine.”

“Better keep your words intact, Joe.” He gestures out his window at the sight of the thick clouds rising up through the sky.

“Shit—the lake effect! It's supposed to snow!”

“This doesn't seem like the kind of thing that would drive through snow, either!”

“It's not! We've gotta get back to the church, quick!” I turn the key and the car sputters in response. I concentrate on it starting but it shakes and shudders as I keep the key held in place. The engine finally does and I'm quick to shift it out of neutral. But I almost slip the clutch veering back onto the road.

Once it's gathered back together, I drive us back to Syracuse to pick up Barney and Billy at the church. I guess Brick and Anthrax will have to wait a little bit because I ain't driving in snow in this thing.


	8. (pulling strings and frayed edges)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “What's with you boy?  
> Think hard.  
> A tattooed body to hide who you are.  
> Scared to be honest, be yourself.  
> A cowardly man.”  
> -”Clown”, Korn

“We've got to get our asses back to 'Swaygo, quick!” Billy screeches from the back seat. I'm driving the four of us back from Syracuse on this road that's slowly turning to ice with every passing mile. The clouds are collecting to the north of us and forming a massive, thick dark gray bank over the lake. The sight of the swirling darkness is sending shivers up my spine even though I have on three layers over my body and the heater's going in front of me. It's going to snow soon but I need to stay calm so we don't veer off the road again.

At least I haven't eaten yet.

I can't hardly shake the image of the smoke on the reservation out of my mind. It was coming from Boston. Maya had taken the arrowhead from me that one time and ran off to the reservation to do... something and then hurried off to Boston again.

Well, I feel used now. I found her in such dire straits only for her to be a conniving sneaky little bitch who went back to her foster father, the man who beat her and her sister. I can't feel sorry for her now.

She not only lied to me but she lied to Lars, too. This supposedly hoity toity zine writer but is actually a liar who can't get out of the place that's caused Candace more grief than I or anyone of us here in the car can imagine.

My fingers curl around the rim of the steering wheel. I have on leather gloves right now. I have this itch to take them off, one finger at a time and smack one of them across Maya's face. I'm not a violent person nor do I bar grudges, but if it's violence she wants and can't seem to get enough of… okay.

Big fat droplets of rain begin to fall against the windshield. We are a mere few minutes from town when the rain picks up and soon, it's an utter downpour upon us.

The country club enters my view from the gathering fog and so does a sign urging me to take a detour, or the way of the bus route.

“I wonder why?” Lars asks me, glancing over at me.

“Probably ice,” Barney explains. “See? It's turning into ice right now on the outside of the windows.”

I take the turn and we're passing by the country club, Black Orchid, the hockey rink, and the Denny's. The bus stop passes us on the right. We're nearing the Bitters and the edge of town. It's here that the rain actually stops, but the clouds are still hanging down low right over us.

But there's another detour sign.

Damn it.

I take the road towards the water, of all places. But then again, this is the place where I like to take my walks, down by the water. The trees are thickening here along with the fog. I think it might rain again as the trees clear out before my neighborhood.

“Hey, there's Maya,” Lars gestures out the windshield. I take a peek out there to recognize that short slender little lady with the long black hair standing near the edge of the clearing, right near the water. I pull over to the side of the road with the car still in second gear. She has her back to us but I know she knows we're here.

“I need to have a word with her,” I tell him.

“Now?” He raises his eyebrows at me in surprise.

“Yes.”

I peer out the window at the sight of her back still facing us. It's like she's watching the clouds come in from the lake.

“Tell you what,” I start, unbuckling my seat belt, “you guys go get Spence and we'll all meet up at the House of Grey—I have to take care of this.”

“You sure, man?” Barney asks me.

“Positive.”

I climb out of the car only to be met with the rush of raw cold wind from the lake. The snow is coming. I'm taking a huge risk here, but it's worth it if I want to knock some sense into Maya. I adjust the lapels of my coat before heading on over to her.

I hear the car door shut behind me and the car itself pull away.

God, it's cold.

But I'm not too far from home if I have to walk on home. Spence doesn't live too far from here anyway, either. This'll be quick anyway.

She turns around to see me with a nonchalant look upon her face.

“Maya!” I declare to her in a firm voice. Okay, now I'm pissed.

“Hello, Joey,” she greets me in that same light voice, still light despite the howling winds and the threat of snow before us. As I come closer to her, I catch the rush and the roar of the waves down beneath the ledge, which is a mere few feet from her. I don't even know where to begin.

So I start yelling at her. I don't think I even thought any of this through, either.

“Maya, what the hell do you think you're doing? Coming out here and jerking Lars and me around like some sort of puppeteer! What is wrong with you!”

“It's nothing like that, Joey,” she answers in a calm tone.

“Nothing like that? Bullshit. Lars and I have been trying to help you out and all you've done is lie to us and then run off like some scared little girl with your fucking tail between your legs. Now fess up. What are you hiding from us?”

She glares into my face with that crease on her forehead shining bright pearlescent white even though the sun has disappeared behind the clouds.

“Us?” she repeats as if taunting me. “There's only one of you here.”

“Lars isn't too far away, you know. Now, tell me. What're you hiding from us? What're you hiding from me? The man who saved your ass from drowning and freezing to death in the pouring rain?”

“Have you ever exactly thought anything through, you foolish boy?” she demands to me, stepping around my left side.

“Who you callin' a fool?” I retort to her, following her all the way around me. She lingers close to my face with the wind billowing hers and my black hair back away from the raging cold waters behind me.

“You open your mouth again,” she warns me, but she never finishes. I grit my teeth at her. I clench my fists down by my sides.

“I don't want you to find out,” she continues in a near whisper.

“Find out what?”

“Joey, do you remember that one line I said in the first edition of _After the Watershed_? About digging too deep otherwise I could drown?”

“Vaguely. Why?”

She clutches onto the lapels of my coat. I try to push her away but she has too hard of a grip on me. Awful strong for such an otherwise feeble woman.

“You're gonna die screaming like the man in agony that you are,” she whispers. “And I'm gonna watch.”

“Let go of me,” I command to her through gritted teeth.

“Gladly.”

And without another word, she shoves me over the ledge. My legs push out as I'm falling onto my back into the black waters down below.

I splash into the waters. The rush of cold has me surrounded like a tomb.

I can't breathe.

I can't scream.

But I do it anyway.


	9. (the blackest orchid)

It's like going to sleep.

I close my eyes at the sight of the swirling bubbles around me. Everything is black. Everything is cold.

I can't breathe. If I do, I'll die.

I don't know where the bottom is.

I don't even know if there are rocks right here.

I'm suffocating. Suffocating under the dead, monolithic weight of the cold and the water around me.

My life is flashing before my eyes, from the first day of kindergarten, to the day my uncle gave me the pocket knife, to the first time I ever heard the word “Injun” thrown at me. The first song I ever sang along to. My hockey mask. My drum kit.

The image of my trying out for Anthrax. My first show with them.

 _Spreading the Disease_.

The bus accident that killed Cliff.

 _Among the Living_.

 _State of Euphoria_.

The phone call the night before my birthday.

Something else happened that day. Something… else…

Like I hung up the phone and then took the cord.

I put it around my neck as if I was hanging myself.

I don't even remember doing it.

But maybe that's why I've been so despondent.

And maybe that's why I've been seeing Death so much.

But it's too late to ruminate on it now.

If only I had more time to give it more thought.

If only I had more time to say good bye to my parents.

But this time is all there is, and it's slipping away one tiny bubble at a time.

I'm a skinny man who has fallen to his death.

In fact, Death is rising up through the waters right now with her scythe held high to take me with her.

I'm drowning. I'm freezing.

I'm drowning and freezing.

Everything is black. Everything is loud.

And then everything is quiet.

This is what it's like to die.

It's just like…

…relaxing…

…it's like…

…going right to sleep…

I open my eyes to the bright swirling gray and white over me. I'm dead. I've left my body. I feel nothing.

There are some noises around me, but I can't tell what they are.

They're too far away.

I'm closing my eyes again to the black around me. It's taking over me. It’s taking me under.

I open my eyes again, this time to a warm lit room before me. I feel something soft underneath me. It’s a little hot in here, in fact. I fetch up a sigh.

I'm alive. By some stroke of luck, by some miracle, I am in fact alive. Or maybe I really am dead and this is in fact the afterlife. Wherever this is, it's comfy from the plush couch beneath me and the heavy almost hot blankets over me.

I know this place. I recognize it.

And I recognize Lars striding into the room from the next one with a black mug in one hand.

“Hey, there he is,” he greets me. “I was just about to check on you to see if you woke up yet.”

He kneels to the right of me for something.

“Where am I?” I ask him.

“Portland. There was no way in hell on Earth I was going to leave you in Oswego what with the snow coming and whatnot. Billy, Barney, and Spencer all suggested that I take you back here with me, too. So I ran back to your place real quick, and found the wormhole, and climbed right in, and brought you back here. My wife finally left and I didn't want to leave this house empty so it's just you and me here.”

“Wait—wait, wait, did I die?” I ask him.

“Funny you ask that because you were actually pronounced dead on the scene,” he tells me. “You actually did in fact die, Joey. For about five minutes, but you had no pulse, you weren't moving, and your skin was freezing cold, becoming inflamed, and—as pale white as death. But they put the paddles on you and brought you back to life. Scared the shit out of us all the while, too.”

I groan inside of my throat. My whole body and my joints ache. I have a dull nagging pain in the back of my head. Probably from laying so still for so long next to freezing to death.

“How'd you save me, though?” I continue on, shifting my weight against the sofa cushions. He looms over my waist while grasping the black mug in both hands.

“You really wanna know the story?”

“Yeah. I don't know what else to do, so you might as well tell me.” Lars clears his throat and then he pats my right foot. I scoot it over for him to take a seat on the other end of the couch.

“We got about a block away from the clearing,” he says, “when—it was Barney who saw Maya shove you into the lake. He saw it in the rear view mirror. So he pulled over real quick and the engine just died right there. Like he tried to downshift it and it just—killed it. So the three of us are freaking out, like 'holy fucking shit, Maya just pushed Joey into Lake Ontario as the snow is coming in!' We get out of the car and we start running down the road towards her. And you know, I'm a little too fat so I can't run too fast but those two—they got to her first and just tackled her.”

“They tackled her, really?”

“Yeah! Barney dove for her and knocked her down, and then Billy was right behind him. And then when I get there, he turns around and he yells at me, 'get Joey! Get Joey! Before he freezes to death!' And then Maya said something about banana slugs and leeches eating you alive because they're in the water or something like that, I didn't exactly hear her. So, I take off my coat real quick and I dive head first right into the water.”

“You—You saved me?” I sputter out. And he gazes at me with a thoughtful expression on his face before taking a sip from his mug.

“I'm Danish, Joey—I'm used to the cold like you are. I also have a lot more fat on my body. So I get in there and the water's just raging. But I get down a bit and I see you there in the waters with your eyes closed and I think 'ah, shit'. Like 'ah, fuck me,' you know? Your head was about a few millimeters from this big jagged rock, too, so for a moment I thought 'oh, fock, he hit his head and he's gone' but there was no way I'd leave you, though, especially since Billy told me to get you and I did in fact see banana slugs and little black leeches heading for you. And then I realized you were sinking, like a stone. You're so skinny that I was having to hustle and fight against the storm surge because I swore your corpse was going straight to the bottom of the lake and get eaten up by leeches. So it took me a little bit to get you. But I get you right before you're dragged down any further into the darkness, and I brought you back up to the surface. Billy was standing there on the ledge to help me and he takes you and lays you down on my coat, and then he grabs me. And I guess Maya overcame Barney—yeah, that scrawny little broad overtook Barney—and she ran off.”

“She ran off!” I gape at him.

“Boogied the hell out of there. And at that point, it starts pouring rain and we're like fuck it, and we pick you up off the ground and take you to the hospital there in town. And yeah—they pronounced you dead on arrival. But you were lucky, though. They revived you and you've been comatose for three days straight.”

“And then you took me here.”

“And then I took you here, back to my humble home in the City of Roses. The medics told me to keep an eye on you and make sure your body gets back up to normal, healthy temperature again. So I put you the couch and covered you with all of my blankets, including the electric one. I’ve just been waiting for you to wake up.”

He takes another sip from his mug before speaking again.

“I should also tell you, Joey. After you were revived, Billy told me something—Maya told him.”

“And what's that?”

He shifts his weight there next to my feet.

“Who's the stripper at Black Orchid that you really like? Is it Lupe?”

“Yes,” I reply in a soft voice. He chews on his bottom lip.

“She showed up to Black Orchid—right around the time, I guess we were at the reservation—and just rampaged.”

“Rampaged.” I shift my weight under the blankets. And it takes me a moment to realize I'm laying on his silly putty couch. “Like how?”

“She walked in there and—went berserk for lack of a better word. Like she raised hell in there. She threatened to torch the place when Mrs. Hamilton, Cindy, and Morgan subdued her and kicked her out. Their heels may be high, but man, I guess those women can run like crazy. And then she came back and—” He stops, pursing his lips together. I lift my head at him.

“And? And what?”

He closes his eyes.

“Hit Lupe—and Louie—one right after the other—right over the head with a stool. Killed both of them. She killed the Jacksons.”

I gape at him, feeling the back of my throat dry out.

“She—She killed Lupe?” I repeat in a small voice. And he nods his head: I can see tears brimming his eyes.

“Why?” I feel my throat close up.

“No idea. She threatened to kill Gwendolyn, too, but Mrs. Hamilton—God bless her—put her foot right in Maya's crease—the scar on her forehead—and told her to get the fuck out or she's calling the cops. And then Maya got out of there.”

“And went to the clearing,” I follow along. I lay my head back against the arm of the couch. Lars sniffles, but I don't even know right now.

I can't believe it.

My desert rose is gone.


	10. (the song that closed denmark)

_January 10, 1989. Portland, Oregon_.

I'm still here after all. I'm still here and yet Lupe is gone. I was so distracted, so sidetracked by all that’s been happening that I failed to see what went down in the background. Even though it happened without my knowledge, I still feel like I could’ve done something. I could’ve made my way to Black Orchid to check on the girls: there’s not only a wormhole connecting there with my place, but I could’ve stopped there while we were driving home! I was so close, and yet so far. I failed to protect the girls and two of them ended up dying.

I'm just laying here on Lars' silly putty couch, thinking of everything that happened, including my falling into the lake. I'm looking up at the dim lit ceiling over me and the only trivial thought I have is what's the time.

Surely, this is a warning from Maya and her pushing me was a mere part of it. She's warning me not to come close. But why? What is her family hiding, or rather trying to hide? More importantly, why are they hiding from me and Lars? And what even is with the taking of my best friend and my former band down with it all?

Or maybe she doing this to trick me. She does have a history with that.

I can only think of who she and her foster father might take next. My parents, probably? I shudder at that thought.

I'm thinking of Candace, and what she might be thinking right about now. I wonder what she might be doing at the moment. I wonder if she even knows what happened here and back in New York. I wonder how she'd feel about it, like would she be surprised if either of us told her or if she's in cahoots with Maya wanting to hide all the time, too.

Lars returns to the room right then, wrapped in his heavy coat once again and with a pair of heavy red suede gloves on; but he continues on into the kitchen for something, with his long brown hair drifting behind him like a smooth curtain. He had brushed his hair.

I owe him my life. He saved me. He risked his life to save mine, kind of like how I risked my life to save Maya. And like Maya, I'm more or less his problem now. At least until I'm nursed back to my normal amount of strength.

I lift my arm out from underneath the blankets for my skin to breathe. I look down at my skin, which is brown on my forearm but slightly pale upwards over my elbow and my upper arm. My fingers are still slender and narrow, but the veins in my hand are a lot more prominent now after experiencing what I went through the past three days. They had taken off my clothes, probably after the three of them got me into the car and drove me off to the hospital.

I lift up the blankets a bit, and I take a glance down at my bare chest. There are those reddish marks on my skin from where the person put the paddles on me. Maybe that’s when I opened my eyes at that one point. Or maybe that was after Lars had dragged me out of the water. Who knows and I don’t think I’ll ever know.

I was actually dead on arrival. I really had died and resurrected.

Lars ducks down for something in the pantry.

I flash back on the first time I was here with that copy of _After the Watershed_ found here in Portland. She led me on. She led both me and Lars on, and I fell for it falling into Lake Ontario. Granted, I took Candace's word for it in that Maya likes to create diversions, but I never thought it'd play out like this.

He rises up before the pantry and pushes some of his hair back from his shoulder onto his back. He then strides over to me, flexing the fingers of his gloves all the while.

“Joey—I hate to do this to you, but,” he starts once he approaches me, “I need to run into town real quick for a few things. Given I live so close, I'm just gonna walk. It’ll only be about twenty minutes, maybe.”

“No, God, please don't!” I beg him. I try to sit up but I can't because of the dead weight of blankets over my body. I'm weak from the lack of nutrients in my body.

“Listen, I know. You almost died. Shit, you _died_! So it's understandable that you're kind of paranoid right now. But—I need to run a quick errand, though. If you're hungry—and I'm sure you are, you've been comatose, therefore you haven't eaten in three days—scratch that, four days—I have plenty of fruit and some bagels in the kitchen. Go on and help yourself and take care of yourself. Walk around. Get the strength back in your legs and your body.”

I grip onto his arm. Much to my surprise, I still have a little nugget of strength in my hand and in my forearm.

“Please—” I beg him. “Please don't leave me.”

“I'm just going out for a bit,” he explains with a soft look on his face. “I won't be long—I just need to pick up a few things for dinner, alright?”

I gaze up at him: the side of his head is illuminated by the gray light filtering in from the window behind me.

“Since they took your clothes given they were drenched, soaking wet, there are my clothes in the closet that you can borrow until we get you back to Oswego. My pants might be a little baggy on you, though… Oh, but there's also that checkerboard shirt that Marcia had made for you. You were wearing it when you fell in the lake but it was only a little bit damp, so it's on the dryer right now. I'll be back, Joey. I promise.”

And without another word, he steps away and heads out the door, leaving me alone in the house. I lay my arm back down on top of the blankets. I guess it’s just me again.


	11. (joe the hacker)

_January 10, 1989. Portland, Oregon_.

I've been laying here for about five minutes after Lars left. I have too many blankets covering my body at the moment. And I need to get up to take a piss.

I'm too weak after having not eaten anything for almost four days straight, not since the evening after I laid down the vocal tracks for my album. If anything, I'm ready to roll right off of the couch. I had to be yanked off of it the last time by Lars himself and now I have a heavy pile of fabric covering me.

I need to get up. I need to get up!

I hope I don't sink into the cushions again. But indeed, they've firmed enough at some point otherwise I wouldn't be laying right here at the moment. If they're firm enough for me to lay on them, surely they're firm enough to let me go off and onto the floor.

I push off the top blanket, followed by the next, and the next, and the next—Jesus, how many blankets did he put on me?! More importantly, how many of these does he have!

When I reach the heavy fuzzy dark brown electric blanket, that's when I roll onto my hip and part of the way onto my side. I look down at my poor stomach. God, I need to eat something. I keep going until I'm laying onto my side all the way: I'm laying right at the edge of the couch.

I push the electric blanket off of me a little bit more. I slip my left thigh out of there and my knee, and I don't pay attention to where I'm headed to at first.

And that's when I fall off the couch.

I land face down on the soft carpet. Part of the electric blanket is still wrapped around the lower part of my left leg. But I push myself against the bottom of the couch to kick it off of me. I have to kick three times in order to get it off of me. And even then it knocks the wind out of me.

I back onto my chest and slip my arms underneath me like I'm about to do a push-up.

My arms shake as I bring myself up off of the floor. My muscles twitch. My heart pounds inside of my chest. My joints crack, including the joints in my neck and my shoulders. I put one knee underneath me. I'm losing strength, one second at a time I'm down there on the floor.

I straighten my back as I lift myself upright. I stare up at the ceiling overhead and then the front door before me.

The fact I had to die in order to be here right now. The fact I had to smack my head on a rock and submerge under freezing cold water while the lake effect snow was coming in in order to be here right now.

I raise one knee up in front of me and, using the arm of the couch, I pick myself off the floor. My knees quiver and shake as I stand onto my feet. I'm a mess right now with my hair wanting to tousle over my shoulders and into my face and my body trying to keep itself together as every inch of me twitches and aches. I am not unstoppable and I am not invincible. But I am in fact here right now.

I take one step forward and turn around to face the rest of the room and the kitchen. I need something to eat and need my clothes.

I stagger across the carpet and towards the kitchen. I catch my balance on the edge of the counter and, once I'm steady, I open the fridge door to see if he has any milk or anything to give me a short shot of strength for the time being. There is a carton in here.

I don't bother grabbing myself a glass: I need it. I unscrew the lid and take a big gulp as if I'm drinking down my last drink. And then I realize I not only haven't eaten anything in four days, but I haven't had anything to drink since then, either.

I don't want to drink all of his milk so I lower it before my chest and I take a breather to catch my breath.

I stare into the next room in front of me, and I can see the checkerboard fabric resting atop the washing machine. I'm in nothing but my underwear, but I need something in order to look decent. If it's just that shirt, then… okay.

I set the carton down on the counter and keep one hand on the edge as I make my way in there to fetch it. Indeed, I put on this shirt and after buttoning it up, it's still a little too short on me, but I frankly don't mind.

I return to the kitchen and return the carton back to the fridge, and I keep walking on towards Lars' bedroom for some pants. My knees are still quivering as I'm making my way in here, but I think this time it's more from the fact I'm not wearing pants than it is from hunger.

I enter the room to behold the sight of his bed right in front of me and the closet to the to the right of me. I take a look down at the floor and the big pile of clothes right there before my feet. There are some shirts, what looks like a belt—I think it is, anyways? And then there's a pair of black jeans!

I pick up the pair and slide them over my knees, my thighs, and my hips. But they are a little snug on my waist and the hems rise up around my ankles.

Something catches my eye; I look over to my left and the burlap sack resting on a chair tucked in the corner of the room. I wonder if he even did some things with the things in there while I was out.

I open up the mouth of the sack and take a peek inside. There's that book on hacking and coding. I hope this thing can break it down for me because it's a whole other world to me.

I'm standing there in the middle of the room with the book propped open over my twitchy left fingers, and I find that coding is nothing more than English, all of the numbers, some odd symbols, and some names that are at least a hundred years in the future.

I take a seat on the edge of the bed so I can better focus on the text and not just my fingers.

My way around computer software, which I figure out almost immediately is singlehandedly running most of Seattle and trying to perforate its way into Portland and New York and Boston, and already left New Orleans broken and down in the dumps.

It's nothing more than text: commands. Coding. Codes. Like the recipe to a muffin or a donut or a Napoleon. Telling computers what to do with their data, or what's in their memory bank.

So basically me if I was broken down and made into a computer. Alright. In other words, the one thing that's powering Seattle and driving everything underneath the moniker of Maxwell Industries up there is nothing more than a metric shitload of homely ass computers stacked up on each other like a bunch of bricks. The white wires I've been seeing are a mere part of the equation, and they're apparently stout enough to break a car window and nearly impale two guys in the Bronx.

When someone operates something up there, that machine borrows code from one of those warehouse ones and reads it faster than I can even think, and then implements it on the commanding end.

Simple. Or so I think. It's gotta be written down to the very last comma, and the very last letter and number, otherwise it'll malfunction and send off error signals. That's it.

I read on and find the one thing that's difficult is computers retorting back at the person if there's a wrong button or key or if something's goes misunderstood. So easy it's difficult, like playing drums or singing.

“Of course,” I say to myself. “Problems are puzzles and codes are the pieces.”

Which means hacking is nothing more than intervening. Which means Lars and I need to do a little snooping up north in order to find out what the big deal is so we can get some answers from Maya and her foster family. I close the book, and lay it down on my lap, and rub my eyes. I just gleamed over the standards, but I guess at some point, the world can in fact call me singer, musician, and now, hacker.


	12. (sneaking in seattle)

_January 10, 1989. On Interstate 5 between Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington_.

"So run this down for me again?"  
It's about three hours after the fact, and a little after I found more food to feed myself and took a shower at Lars' place, and now it's nearly nightfall, and he and I are driving up to Seattle in his ramshackle little hydrogen car. He put the burlap sack of stuff in the back seat right behind me. The dark road is loud underneath the tires, despite the quiet of the engine. Most of the drive up has consisted of on and off big fat rain droplets and glimmers of that blue neon in front of us. The fact that blue neon is being powered by nothing more than a bunch of big black bricks is astounding to me, and the fact that it all wants to head out to my neck of the woods makes me nervous. I have no doubt that it is in fact a warning and Lars and I are living in a country that is watching our every move, from the drones to the fact the wormholes are moving.

The fact it's dark right now over us tells me that we're out of sight, out of mind. We beckon the darkness: we have to linger here for a while, at least until the neon nights are darkened themselves.

He had lent me one of his black overcoats which, much to my chagrin, is a little bit too small on me with the hems of the sleeves sliding up away from my wrists. He confessed to me that since my big overcoat got soaked from my falling into the lake, those leather gloves I had been wearing, the ones which Ellen had given me, had fallen somewhere onto the floor of Barney and Billy's car, which means I'm without my gloves for the time being.

Oh well.

"Okay," I begin, "so the book told me that everything that's being controlled up in Seattle is from a series of a bunch of big blocky computers, like they're in a warehouse somewhere in downtown. That's about all I know because I still don't know Seattle all too well."

"Okay, so be on the lookout for a warehouse of some sort," he follows along as we follow a bend in the road. "Okay." The clouds gather over our heads into a rich dark blanket; it begins to rain, and it rains enough in the span of a couple of minutes to coax a cold chill from me. I nestle down in the passenger seat next to him. I'm freezing just witnessing the rain around us.

Within time, the harsh blue neon brightens through the black rain around us, to the point it's unbearable. To think the heart of Midtown Manhattan is going this way now terrifies me. It can't. No. Not Manhattan. Not New York.

I can sort of understand Seattle given it's own thing, kind of like how Oswego and Syracuse are kind of their own thing. But at least the one thing we're willing to send to the City is water and electricity. We're not trying to inflict this... this... thing onto the rest of the world.

We wind our way through the heart of Tacoma, followed by Sea-Tac and this little neighborhood which Lars referred to as "Georgetown", right outside of where I practiced singing in that recording studio and nearly blew out my vocal cords.

The neon seems brighter than normal, like it's a lot more blue and a lot more ferocious on the eyes. I wish I have my sunglasses with me. They're probably at the bottom of Lake Ontario for all I know.

"Jesus," he mutters to himself, tugging down the visor.

"I know, right?"

"Makes Manhattan look like a regular old city. I say we get off here..."

We take the next exit into west Seattle and Belltown, where we played hockey. If there's one thing I don't understand is if I tried to hang myself on the phone cord back at my place and subsequently broke the thing so we don't hear it ring, how was I able to make a call here to Seattle so the Circle Jerks could play here against those cyborgs? In fact, I ask Lars that same question.

"A wormhole, probably?" he suggests as we roll up to a stoplight. "It seems likely, I mean, they do in fact move around and they behave as portals. Like how Molly was able to eavesdrop on us that one time."

He then stops.

"Hang on a second, back up. You did what?"  
"Tried to hang myself on the phone cord, like right after I got off the phone with Jonny Z the day I got fired. I saw it as my life was flashing before my eyes when I was drowning in the lake."

"Huh. And you really don't remember doing it?"

"Not at all. It's like I--blocked it out or something. Maybe that's why I've been seeing Death and ghosts lately. I tried to die before and couldn't."

"And then you did for real. Perhaps your resuscitation is a sign that this means the end of seeing ghosts on your part?"

"But that opens another question, though," I point out.

"What's that?"

"Why have you been seeing them?"

"What, the ghosts?"

"Yeah. You've seen Mrs. Snow, Vera, Mr. Lang, and the Man in Black. You've seen the ghosts as much as I've seen them."

"Good question. Really, that is--hmm." The light turns green and we pull ahead down the block: I couldn't see what the street name here is, but I can say everything here is lit up with blue and green like it's days leading up to Christmas. The Space Needle towers over us in the digital bath of blue, but I'm on the lookout for this big warehouse. Surely it's nothing too fancy to look at, I mean it's a warehouse, for crying out loud. I take a glimpse out of my window to behold all of the little shops and boutiques and restaurants. Nothing too fancy to look at, and it's even more buttoned down despite the fact the rain has stopped for a moment.

But everything is smooth and streamlined, either a solid of straight black dotted with glass tubes emitting that fierce bright blue, shining as if it's hot metal, or some kind of gray with the twinning green. I think back to the church in Syracuse. I want to know about THAT in particular, like who was calling us? Who's been trying to warn us?

The rain picks up again, this time as a fine, light mist on the windshield.

"Hey, there's Matt and Dominique!" Lars gestures out the windshield and I follow his gaze to the two people standing at the next street corner both of them wrapped in heavy black overcoats: the one on the left has a rich wave of golden blond hair over his head while the woman on the right has those little black ringlets all over her head. By the streaming of the headlights onto them, I can in fact make out the worried looks upon their faces.

Lars pulls the car up to the curb so as to meet up with them. I roll down the window in order for Matt to lean in first.

"We were just talking about you guys," he greets us; he eyes me with his eyebrows knitted together and a frown on his face. "You okay, Joey? You don't look good, like you haven't eaten anything in a while."

"He had a little accident a few days ago," Lars explains from the left of me.

"Accident on the lake," I fill in. "It's--It's a long story. Anyways, you were talking about us?"

"Yeah, like you guys are making headlines right now."

I gape at him and I take a glance over at Lars, who's got his eyebrows raised as high as they'll go up his brow.

"Wait, how are we making headlines?" I ask him.

"Like how you guys are two former thrash metal guys who are trying to raise hell in the world," Dominique explains. "Breaking into people's houses and the New York Times. I work with the press, sure. But I can tell you guys that I know it's not true."

"You guys wanna get in?" Lars suggests.

"We were actually gonna go around the corner to get a bite to eat," Matt points out, "but yeah, sure. We could use a little protection from the rain."

"Be careful getting into the seat behind Joey here," Lars advises them. "There's a bag on the floor full of stuff that we might find useful."

Matt tugs open the door behind me and he lets Dominique climb in first behind me, and then he follows suit.

"What's in here?" he asks us.

"What, in the bag?" Lars peers into the rear view mirror at him.

"Yeah."

"Uh... um, tools?"

"Tools? What kind of tools?"

"A... funnel," I reply to that; it's not that I don't trust Matt and Dominique, it's just that I don't trust this area.

"Anyways, where are we going?" Lars quips.

"Just around the corner," she replies, and he lunges ahead to the corner, and we drive onto the next side street, a narrow stretch of pavement lit up by more of those same neon blue lights suspended by white wires crossed overhead.

"Right here, Lars." He comes to a halt right in front of a cafe, and it reminds me a lot of the same place we had dinner at over in Ballard, from the dark windows to the fact that there are more of those white wires on the gutters overhead.

"You guys wanna join us?" she offers us.

"Sure," Lars replies.

"I don't see why not." If it gets more food in my stomach after the past three days, I will take it. We climb out of the car as the drizzle picks up yet again. I stare up at the black sky and the eerie blue glow the one thing lighting up the whole thing.

"Joey--" Lars says from behind me. I lower my gaze at him as he's pointing up the street. I take a look up there to find a big blue sign at the end of the block reading "Maxwell Industries: 1 mile ahead. Authorized personnel only."

"Holy shit," I mutter under my breath.

"Yeah. Shocked me when I recognized it, too. I mean, the fact it's literally _right there_!"

I take a look at him and he stares up at me with a little twinkle in his eye.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" he asks me in a soft voice.

"After dinner, we do a little snooping? A little sneaking in Seattle?"

"It's computers! They don't care if we have hair or if we have hearts in our chests or stomachs in our bellies. What could possibly go wrong?"

"Good question."

"I mean, really, we're wearing black and we're civilians--two former thrash metal guys who are in fact trying to raise hell if you will." He flashes me a smirk upon saying that. "We can just play around like we don't know what we're doing there and we can act like we know nothing."

"We don't, either."

"So, what could possibly go wrong?"

"Again, good question."

"Hey, you guys comin' or what?" Matt calls out to us from the entrance of the cafe.


	13. (the islands are in trouble)

During dinner, I whispered to Lars that I would meet him around the back, that is if I could find the back door to the alleyway out there. That is if there in fact a back way out of here. I told him I'd excuse myself and then wait up for him to play catch up with me.

Once I was finished, I excused myself and moseyed over to the back hallway there, and made it look like I was going into the bathroom. Sure enough, I did in fact find the back door there at the end of the hall, and now I'm back outside, standing in a narrow alley, shivering in the cold breeze coming in from the Sound nearby.

I tug on the lapels of this little jacket that he lent me. To think my overcoat is soaking wet, and probably still is soaking wet from falling into the lake. Well, it's gonna be pretty soon here where Lars and I will be one step closer to figuring all of this out. At least I have hope that we will figure it out.

Within time, Lars emerges from the back door behind me while clasping onto the lapels of his coat.

"My word," he mutters aloud. "Anyways, let's get a move on--"

We walk together to the street where we had parked and indeed spotted the sign guiding us to, hopefully, the warehouse. The wind blows behind us and all around us as we head on up the sidewalk to the end of the block. The sign is shining so bright in all of that ghoulish bright blue light: I almost have to shield my eyes as we come within range of it. Lars meanwhile, bows his head and turns away once we past it.

We reach the end of the block and find ourselves shrouded in darkness. The sole light is from the glow of the neon right behind us. I blink several times in order for my eyes to adjust and then I feel something jerking me back from here.

A big black semi blows on by me, missing me by a few inches.

"Slow down, jackass!" Lars shouts after the truck.

"Jesus Christ, good thing you were standing here," I point out to him. "I would've died a second time and for real then."

"No kidding. That sign there before this street here is an utter death trap. I hope whoever put it there realizes that."

We wait another minute and then, once the coast is clear, we cross the narrow street to the other side, where we're met with a tall dark warehouse. I hope this is the warehouse the book was talking about.

We come even closer and I start looking for a door anywhere on the outside. And then Lars catches me again.

"What's the matter?" I ask him.

"Be careful, Joey. There could be cameras, booby traps, anything of that sort of thing around here."

Something catches my eye right above me: I take a glimpse up to the dark sky and the sight of a drone floating along, high up there, shining back that eerie blue glow in total silence. Speaking of surveillance...

"Joey, over here--" I drop my gaze down to my right and Lars gesturing that I follow him into the darkness on the side of the building. It's totally dark over here except for more of that blue glow from the neighborhood behind us; in the faint light, I make out Lars' silhouette leading me along towards the very end, to this next edge of the building. He stops me right before we reach it and then bows forward for a look. This reminds me of the Morlentes' property, from the layout to the fact something or someone might be watching us. The one exception is there's no out-of-place-looking shed on the other side of the yard in front of us.

There's also no yard here.

"Is there a door?" I ask him in a hushed voice.

"Yes. Right over here. There's also a drone floating about overhead--" He stops me in my place and then he gestures for me to follow him, quickly, to this door in question. We skirt along the wall of the warehouse, and then he flings open the door. He ducks inside first. I follow him and shut it right behind me.

"Phew, that was--" I stop right there because I realize Lars has stopped. I turn around and I find this whole part of the warehouse is a straight up corridor. But every wall around is lined--utterly lined--with white bricks. But each of these bricks are smooth, like they're made of some kind of plastic, and there's a glass window in the middle of each of them, a window looking in view to some kind of circuitry of white wires and blue and green neon. Moreover, it's dead silent in here. So silent that I can hear my own lungs breathing.

"Holy crap," I say aloud.

"My thoughts exactly," he answers in a soft voice.

"Do we go straight ahead?" I ask him.

"Might as well. I don't see any other way, to be honest."

We walk side by side down this corridor towards the very end, where we're met with a left hand turn. We take this turn, and there are more of those bricks for a short while more. At the end of the hall is a big open room that reminds me of the cafeteria in a prison given we can see up to the upper three levels worth of steel grate catwalk looming over our heads. It's lit up by plain white lights lining the walls: I can tell there's not much in here, except for a row of low tables in the middle of the floor right before us.

"What is this?" Lars wonders aloud, and he makes his way over there. I follow close behind him with my hands on the lapels of this coat. Using the plain white light around us, I can make out the sight of papers strewn about the one in front of us. There's one of those plain beige folders resting on the table right in front of me. He picks up one of the papers and we find a few paragraphs printed on the front.

"What's it say?" I ask him.

"It's plans to expand the industry into Canada and Mexico. Like it's spiraling out and stretching itself into a full-on North American level." He sets it down and glances over to his right, and I realize he's looking at the folder in front of me. There's a label reading "classified" on the front side of the folder, but I pick it up for a peek inside of there.

"And what's that?" he asks me.

"I'm not sure. It's all legality speak." I hand it to him for a read on his part. He's silent for a few moments, and then he speaks again.

"Apparently, it's plans to find a way around the biosphere and the hereafter. Like they're making technology to tap into the deepest and most unknown recesses of humanity, as well as planet Earth. They're trying to use all of this high-tech stuff to explain life's biggest questions, or the things that science by itself can't seem to explain. For example, death, ghosts, maybe the wormholes, bewitched things like the arrowhead--"

"My voice," I joke with a chuckle.

"Joey Belladonna's voice, right!" He laughs with me for a second and then he turns serious again as he flips the paper. "But this next page here says they can't seem to get around the fact that everything that's biological doesn't take it too well. For example, since there's a whole underground laboratory over on Bainbridge Island and Vashon Island, across the Sound from here, the plants over there don't seem to be taking it very well, like they're getting some pretty odd mutations in the trees and the shrubs in the wake of neon and the fine heavy machinery there."

He then flashes a grave look at me.

"The islands are in trouble, my man," he whispers to me.

"Not just the islands but New Orleans, too," I recall for him.

"Something tells me the wormholes won't take it too well, either--" He stops and his face lights up. "Wait. That's it!"

"What?"

"It's not moisture that keeps the wormholes open," he explains. "It's all this cybernetic stuff! That's why the ones we opened in your apartment are not propped open there--"

"'Cause the only high-tech mechanism in my apartment is the thermostat," I point out.

"Right!" He pauses again to gaze on at me. "I feel... weird."

"Me, too. At least--I think it's the same weird feeling you're feeling."

"How is it with you?" He knits his eyebrows at me.

"A nagging sensation in the pit of my stomach." I gesture to my belly. "Like something's bugging me."

"I was going to say a weird whirring sound in my ears, but that's equally as strange." He returns to the folder. "It also says here... that--oh my God."

"What?"

"Any exposure to human biology will have horrifying consequences. That goes for any of the cybernetic enhancements, be it wiring, any of the light emitting diodes we keep seeing, anything that involves coding, or the cybernetic serum."

"Except for a placebo."

"Yeah, it says a placebo is totally innocuous--but it does also help with a shattered knee cap and a sore stomach, obviously."

"Obviously."

"But the serum itself, while it is in fact a rather potent painkiller--more potent than morphine--it's used in enhancement surgery--" I think of Maya and her telling me she had surgery on her pituitary gland once. "--which, it says here is incredibly painful because it's done while the patient is awake..."

"Jesus Christ."

"Yeah! It causes a person's reflexes to go way off the charts. They almost turn superhuman. It was introduced as a way to beat out diseases like cancer and even heal broken bones and mortal wounds. It was introduced as a means of completely erasing death."

"And that's a bad thing?"

"Well, it says here that it's still in trial form, because it's technically an alien substance, a human being's immune system wants to fight it and resist it. So it comes out in side effects which are..." He licks his bottom lip. "...of the worst way imaginable."

"Like feathers." I think of Brick.

"Like feathers. Says here the patient will experience the following: a lack in appetite but almost complete erasure of hunger, and an enormous abundance of energy, which is then followed by extreme fatigue, like they have anemia. For example, Maya is pale and often very tired."

"She didn't want to eat, either," I add to that. "Same went for Brick, too."

"It's then followed up by messing with the person's DNA so they become like half-human half-machine hybrids that transform and go far beyond what a normal human is capable of. And then at some point--the machine part turns deadly, especially if they're given more than one dosage over the course of a few days. There's also a note here saying that if the person tries to fight it, the machine part will fight back."

"And make you into a dragon, too, I'd think," I add to that.

"And a dragon and totally psychotic at that, too. That's probably why Maya ran back to her foster father, not because she's comfortable with him."

"He's giving her what she's coming for!" I conclude.

And then we're interrupted by someone clearing their throat.


	14. (sleeping with the bennetts)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _"Little Joe, run for the border,  
>  leave your home.  
> Go where the reptiles roam  
> on the side of the border that is your home."_  
> -"Little Joe", Soundgarden (interestingly)

Lars and I turn around at the same time to see an old man behind us. An old man with frizzy white hair, and wrapped in a rich black coat, and with little white gloves made of latex, and with bit of a sour look on his face. He looks familiar, like I've seen him somewhere before.

“Can I help you two boys?” he demands from us, folding his arms over his chest.

“Um—we were just—” I sputter out. I can hardly think of what to tell this guy.

“We were just leaving,” Lars fills in for me.

“Can I ask why the two of you were looking around at these papers on the table here?”

“We're just—a couple of civilians,” Lars continues, “and we were merely curious as to what's in here, hidden from the world.”

“Well, it's nothing that could be of any importance to either of you,” he snarls at us; for a second, I catch him looking down at my crotch. Wait a minute. I think I know where this guy's from now.

“Well, we just—we just wanted to have a look about here, my good sir,” Lars insists as he looks at the crotch of my jeans again. I try to swallow down my fear but he can sense it.

“Well, there's nothing here to be of importance to you boys—this is an electric company, not a tourism spot.”

“Yes, yes, of course—we're—” Lars clears his throat. “—we're just leaving, my good sir.” He sidesteps away from there. “Come along, Joey—”

The man sneers at me as I duck away from the table and follow Lars back out of there into the hallway. I take a peek over my shoulder at the sight of the man mouthing my name back at me. I shudder as I turn back to Lars and the corner before us. He leads me out of the warehouse back into the dark night, even darker than earlier before. Or maybe it's from the fact we had been in a bright lit place before then.

I blink several times for my eyes to adjust to the darkness again. Once we're back at the street, Lars stops me right there at the curb just in case of another car coming. Or so I think. I gaze on across the dark pavement to where we were before to find the cafe is now closed.

“By the way,” I start again, breathing hard and pressing my hands to my hips, “what did you tell Matt and Dominique there in the cafe? I just—I just now realized that.”

“They told me that they'll be going back to their place and—” He swallows and gasps for air. “—and we can just go right ahead. So—fock.” In the dim light from the neon glow behind us, I can see him clasping onto his side.

“You okay?” I ask him.

“Yeah, it's just—you know. I'm a little too heavy to be sprinting like crazy like that.”

“So what should we do now?”

“Well, let's go back to the car, first of all. I have no idea where Chris and Nancy live, to be honest.”

“Yeah, and I completely forget, to be honest,” I confess to him. “Surely you know where Marcia and Sonia live up here.”

“Oh, yes! Surely they can take us in all of our nonsense,” he remarks. “Hang on, though—” He stops me right before we can cross the street. Another truck blows past us and then we head on across the near black pavement, and soon we find ourselves back in the bath of the blue neon.

“That guy in there was creepy,” I pipe up again as we reach the car.

“Yeah, he kept staring at you like you owed him something,” he adds, unlocking his door.

“Well, not just that but he was staring at my crotch, too.”

“Your crotch?” He wrinkles his nose at that.

“Yeah. It was like 'what the hell, guy?'”

We climb into the car in unison right as the rain starts to fall upon us again. I gaze up at the black sky over our heads to make sure there aren't any more drones up there. Lars starts up the hydrogen right beneath us, and we back out of that little side street and return to the main stretch of pavement. The neon lights are still blindingly bright as we wind our way through the center of town and back to the freeway. I think about everything we had read in those papers back in that warehouse.

They're making all of this in hopes to erase death. Death and destruction. My death and the destruction of the earth while they're at it, too. And then those symptoms! To think of what Anthrax is going through at the moment back in Syracuse. I can only imagine what must be growing out of their bodies, and I shudder at the thought because I can't help but think of Brick in conjunction with that.

Then there's Maya's transforming into that dragon thing…

Lars turns the next street corner and we head onto the freeway. I don't miss any of this glaring neon for any second as we wind our way back through town and towards Sea-Tac again.

It's a few hours once more before I recognize the north side of Portland, there on the other side of the blackened river. He takes the first exit into the eastern side of town, and soon, we find ourselves in a dim lit neighborhood of apartment complexes and two coffee houses. Within time, he pulls up to the curb on our right, and I'm the first to climb out of there and into the misty rain all around us. He follows suit and then he leads me into the complex right next to us. The rain picks up as we make our way to one of the ground level apartments on the left side of the grassy area.

He ducks under the awning first and knocks on the door panel. I reach him as I'm holding onto the lapels of the jacket: this thing is so snug on me, far more snug than anything I've ever worn, such that I swear it's going to cut off my circulation at some point.

The door opens inward and we're greeted by Marcia in her bright purple silk bathrobe and a towel on her head.

“Lars! Joey! What're you guys doing here?”

“Just swung by to see how you ladies are doing,” he answers. “Is it alright if we come in?”

“Of course! You guys are friends—you're more than welcome to come in.”

He steps into their cute little apartment first: to my right is their spacious front room with a pair of comfy looking blue love seats and a matching chair. Off in the far corner is a little brick fireplace and a bookshelf full of books which, I can tell from here, are nothing but cookbooks and classic literature.

Once the door is closed behind me, I can't take it anymore. I peel off the coat to show off the checkerboard shirt to Marcia. But then I realize she's walking the other way, across the carpet to the short hallway on the far side of the room. So I lay it down on the love seat closest to me and I turn my head to find the tiny bright kitchen, where Sonia is making something for herself. She sees me and her face lights up.

“Hey, baby, how ya doin'?” she greets me once I come in there.

“I'm doin' alright, baby doll,” I reply to her, crossing my arms over my chest and leaning against the wall to my right.

“That shirt is hot on you,” she compliments me. “Very hot. Very sexy, showing a bit of your stomach and whatnot.”

I shrug at her.

“I try my best.”

I hear Lars and Marcia speaking in the next room, but I'm focused on Sonia right before me as she's slicing strawberries and some kind of melon.

“Did you know,” she begins in a low voice, “that strawberries are a particularly aphrodisiac?”

“Makes sense. They're as red as lips. Lips I'd like to kiss and get for myself.”

“Shhhh—” She raises a finger to her lips and flashes me a wink.

“So when's your little stage production? A couple of weeks time you said?”

“Yeah. Come join us, Mr. Joey. Come.”

“Come?”

She gestures for me to come closer, and so I do. And she raises a slice of ripe strawberry to my mouth. I gaze at her in the eye as she slips it into my mouth. It's perfect, all full of juice and lush against my tongue. Before I can even swallow, she then sets down the knife on the counter to wrap her arms around my waist. She puts her lips to mine and I slide my fingers into the roots of her ringlets at the back of her head.

She pulls back to gaze right into my face.

“Groove me, baby boy,” she whispers. “Take me to your deepest, darkest place. The one that's full of everything you desire.”

I show her my tongue and give her a little tug at the back of her head. She shows me her teeth at the feel of that.

“Mmm—yeah. Do that again, baby. My good boy.”

I tug her hair again and she shows me her neck. Sonia then sinks down to my waist and the button of my jeans. To mess with her, I take a step back and lean against the wall behind me. But she's quick to undo my pants.

For some reason, I can't help but think of Lupe. To think that Maya actually killed her and her sister when my back was turned. To think that Maya actually killed her and her sister before she killed me!

I recoil at the feel of Sonia's fingers on my skin.

“Are my fingers a little too wet for you, baby?” she teases me.

“No, it's just—”

“Yes?” She gazes up at me. I swallow at the sight of her right there, right with me, her mouth a mere few inches from me.

“I can't,” I confess to her with a sigh. “I just lost someone who I really like.” And she gapes at me.

“Oh, my God.” She flutters her eyelashes at me as she stands upright. “Oh, my God, I—I'm so sorry. I didn't know.”

“It's okay,” I assure her, and I feel the tears coming. I didn't even know Lupe, and she was just a stripper. But she was the one who did it well. But still, why? Sonia then puts her arms around me and leans her head against my chest.

“Really, it's okay,” I repeat myself in a small voice. I hold her against me. Great, now I'm sad.

She stands back to look at me right in the face.

“You know, Marsh and I were just about to curl up with a bowl of popcorn and call it a night,” she explains. “I was making fruit salad for tomorrow…” Her voice trails off. “Wait, where's Lars?”

The kitchen is silent except for a gentle creaking of bed springs.

“I know where he is,” I tell her.

“Yeah, me, too. Um… how about you—take your shoes off—” She glances down to my feet. “—and then I realize you're not even wearing shoes. And you're wearing high waters.” She frowns at me. “What gives?”

“It's—It's a long story.”

“You can tell me in the next room, though. Just let me finish up here and then I'll let you cuddle with me in bed. How's that sound?”

“Sounds excellent.”

“Okay.” She leaves a little peck on my cheek which in turn makes my face feel warm at the sensation. She then returns to the cutting board on the counter, which leaves me there with my back still pressed against the wall and the jeans undone. Without another word, I double back into the front room to take off these jeans and then head into her room. I don't think either me or Lars could've predicted that we'd be sleeping with the Bennetts, but here we are.


	15. (pickpockets and hoodwinks)

_January 11, 1989. Portland, Oregon_.

I wake up to the feeling of something soft and warm next to me. Something that has her arms around my waist like I'm a teddy bear.

I open my eyes and stare straight ahead to the plain wall right in front of me. And then I realize I'm laying in a little twin bed with my shirt off and the blankets lazily laying around my body. I try to roll over onto my back, but she's got too much of a grip on me. I touch her arms and I twist my neck back in hopes for a look at her.

I do in fact recognize her perfume.

“Sonia?” I whisper to her, my voice breaking.

She stirs a bit, but she just buries her face into my back.

“Sonia—” I repeat myself. “Sonia—Sonia—Sonia!”

She hums at me, but I lay there with my arm resting atop my hip so the skin is getting cold. I nibble on my bottom lip before I roll my head over as far as my neck will let me.

“Sonia, I need my hips now, Sonia,” I tell her in a normal voice.

“Hm?” she stirs again.

“You've got a death grip on me. I can't move.”

“Mm—oh.” She loosens her grip on my waist which allows me to roll onto my back. Somewhat, anyways. It's still kind of a tight spot given we're sharing a twin bed.

“It's just—you're so warm and soft, Joey,” she tells me in a near whisper. I take a glimpse into her closed eyes and the loose tendrils of hair strewn over her brow and her cheekbones. “You're good at cuddling.”

And like a strike of lightning, I remember what I want to ask her. She drove Maya to the hospital, and in the wake of everything that's happened, she could very easily be a lynchpin in everything. But I won't know unless I ask her.

“So...” I start, clearing my throat and slipping my arms back under the covers; “do you wanna explain to me—do you mind explaining to me anyways—about what happened when you took Maya to the hospital in Syracuse?”

She shivers and cuddles closer to me. I'm divided on putting my arm around her because she's not my girlfriend, but I can tell she's cold.

“I don't mind at all,” she confesses to me.

“So—do you wanna go into it more? Because I feel like every time Lars and I uncover a new truth about her, something always comes up again. And since it's just you and me here, care to share?”

“Okay, well, Maya actually told me a lot of things on the way to the hospital,” she starts, keeping her eyes closed, “namely about the man she used to hang out with after she ran away from home that one time.” She opens her eyes and stares at me. “Do you know who I'm talking about?”

“The guy. The other member of her dumpster diving party.”

“Right. But did you and Lars ever find a fuller explanation of who that guy is?”

“No, not really.”

“I forget his name but I remember she described him as one of those people who's got a light complexion but seems to walk about in shadow. A man in black.”

“A—man in black?” I think of the Man in Black.

“Yeah. He seemed nefarious, too… just the way she described him to me struck me as someone who really wanted to inflict harm on her after he guided her away from home.”

I run my tongue along my bottom lip. I'm thirsty.

“Did she… explain what happened to him?”

“Not really. She only knows he died at some point in the past and came back as a ghost, like she's seen his ghost while she was at your friends' house.”

Oh. Oh. My god.

Sonia clears her throat again. “She also told me something about a girl she used to know.”

I knit my eyebrows at her. “What girl?”

“A black girl. From—New Orleans, I believe, like she has a French name. Before she rolled out of the car, she told that girl was one of the people she wanted to get back together with her and the man. She described her as a girl with dreads and a big green jade necklace around her neck.”

She clears her throat yet again and, from underneath the covers, I can see her patting her chest with her fingertips.

“She told me she wanted to grab you and the girl and the man and you guys would all come together as like a—ragtag gang of misfits. Going to cities and raising hell and doing a number on people like Lars.”

“People like Lars?”

“Yeah. She's got some issue with rich people and people like her dad who want to control things and supposedly help people out for their benefit. She says Lars is like that because she can see it in the color of his eyes, but I know it's not true.”

“No, it's not. Lars actually strikes me as someone who really wants to help me because he's been down on his luck lately.”

“Right! She told me you seem the 'pickpocket' type, given you were fired and had the door shut on your face just when—I think, anyways—you were just about to make bank. Like she wanted you to join her and become another diver. Another gutter punk, she called you.”

“Funny she says that,” I point out, “'cause _State of Euphoria_ was actually a flop.”

She snickers, and shakes her head, and closes her eyes again. Then she speaks again.

“She also swore me to keep this one to secrecy, but I trust you, though.”

“What's that?”

She clears her throat yet again.

“God, I've got a frog in my throat. The drones are nuclear powered. They're pretty much like nuclear bombs, floating in the sky, and surveilling everything. She told me her foster father and two friends of his are trying to replace them with all of the cybernetic stuff up in Seattle and what's trying to come up here in Portland.”

I frown at that.

“Well, why are they trying to replace them?”

“Some kind of—competition from the past. Like her foster dad and his cronies are trying to make silicone, bionic stuff as a safer alternative because it works well with human biology and shit. Some guy named... Maxwell. I think?”

I gape at her.

“Of course,” I whisper.

“Of course what?”

I gape at her. “Of course! Of course! THAT'S IT!”

I roll out of bed and land onto the floor and my pants. I pick them off the floor and put them on real quick. Sonia meanwhile looks at me confused.

“What? What did I do?” she demands, blinking several times and clearing her throat yet again.

“Sonia, you're a life saver,” I tell her, picking up my checkerboard shirt from the back of the chair tucked in the corner of the room; “—thank you.”

I slip on the shirt real quick and don't bother to button it up as I head out of the room to fetch Lars. I go to the room across the hall to find him and Marcia spooning in bed. I smack his ankles and then shake him by the hip. He groans and looks behind him, disoriented.

“The fuck? Joey?”

“Come on, we've gotta go,” I coax him.

“We've gotta go—where?” His voice breaks from sleep, or from something else given neither he nor Marcia are wearing a shirt. She stirs awake to show me a groggy look.

“Back to New York. Come on—I'll explain on the way.”


	16. (water on the subway)

“You seriously think Maxwell Industries is in competition with someone? Is that what you're saying?”

We took the next wormhole back to New York City at first what I believed was my direction, but we soon figured out it was opened up before us, which means Maya probably did it. And now we're running towards that one subway station in the Bronx, the one where I met up with Lars on his birthday as we went to visit Candace.

“No, listen to me, Lars,” I insist as we head on down the stairs to the terminal. “What I'm saying Maxwell Industries was the thing making the drones. The drones are powered by nukes, and I know this because I live in a place that has two power plants. I never knew what Brick's parents did for a living because nuclear power is kind of a given where I live and that's not really something you talk about at the dinner table, either. And at some point or another, Mike and whoever his cronies are took their name to pass it off as something more futuristic and for the benefit of the earth. They took my best friend's family's fucking name and passed it off as their own!”

“Oh, my God!” he declares, his voice echoing off of the terminal walls. “And you know, now that I think about it, Joey—after watching Maya's behavior with her stepfather, it sounds to me like she's being used, like he's pulling strings on her and manipulating her to do as he pleases, probably to keep people from asking questions.”

“Yeah, and they keep trying to take you and me out because we're the ones asking the questions,” I follow along as we walk at a brisk clip into the platform.

“Not only that, but to keep us quiet, too. It also seems to me that Maya created wormholes to travel from Boston to upstate and then to Denmark and then back here to New York City to set us up because the arrowhead—is an arrowhead. A relic of indigenous people—”

“And something your grandmother gave you!”

“Exactly! And she knows that wherever is anything cybernetic, it will keep those holes open, be it in Boston or at the shores of Lake Ontario.”

It's freezing down here, given it just snowed but it's more freezing than I had remembered from the couple of weeks before. I tug on the lapels of the jacket but it's kind of useless because the stupid thing is too small on me.

“Hey, there's Chris and Nancy,” Lars points out.

Straight ahead, waiting on the platform, is in fact Chris and Nancy, both of them huddled together wrapped in their heavy overcoats. She turns around to see us first, and then Chris follows suit.

“Joey! Lars!” she greets us with a big beaming smile. Lars skids to a stop.

And then I catch the sight of ice crystals forming on the tile wall opposite the platform. They're creating a blanket, a pure white blanket that's spreading over the tiles like an oil spill on its side.

“Oh, Jesus,” I mutter aloud, and then I raise my voice. “You guys should get back!”

“For what?” Chris asks me, knitting his eyebrows together.

“Just do it!” I insist. “Get back! GET BACK!”

“GET THE FOCK BACK!” Lars shouts.

And they dart towards us, just in time as the Boy with No Hands and the Lady in Green float out of the tunnel to our right, walking side by side. His face is empty and hollow, complete without the features of an actual human face. His arms make such an abrupt stop at his wrists, even though he's reaching out towards something. She glows with the eerie blue and green light that I remember from my parents' house that night. Her head is bowed and her hair streaks behind her as if the wind's blowing down there in the tunnel.

I hear something to our left.

Lars huddles close to me. So does Nancy, and Chris looms right behind me.

I watch these two ghosts, two members of the ghosts from the machine, walking along the railroad tracks like two people just taking a walk.

And then I realize the sound to our left is not a train. Mainly because there's no light flooding over them.

I smell something, something swampy.

And it's freezing in here—I swear the temperature is dropping whole degrees by the second.

“Holy shit,” Chris mutters behind me… as we catch the sound of tons of water creating a wave down the tunnel. Probably water from… Lake Ontario.

“I SWEAR TO GOD!” I shout at the top of my lungs as it gets loud in here. The four of us run the other way, back to the entrance. I take a glimpse over my shoulder to see the waters rushing into the terminal from the tunnel to the left. The Boy with No Hands raises his stubs to the ceiling. The Lady in Green opens her mouth as if she's screaming.

We run up the stairs as the horrifying shrieks of the whole city of ghosts underneath the City fill our ears.

It's ungodly. It's the sound of my nightmares. It's the sound of the apocalypse.

The four of us reach the top in time as the water rushes into the subway. I look up at the buildings around us, at the golden yellow giving way to that bright blue neon. It's here. I'm too late because I'm too much of a damn fool to even realize that high tech extends behind a recording studio and my thermostat.

The Morlentes have arrived and injected their venom into the City.

“Angeline!” Lars shouts across the vacant street. Before I can realize that that is in fact Angeline over there on the other sidewalk, I feel something hard on the back of my head.

It's so hard, it's painless.

I roll my eyes up to the back of my head. I feel my knees buckle. I fall in time to see Nancy stopping for me. Her voice fades out.

“Joey? Joey! Joey—”

But I'm going again. I've died once before. I'm dying again.


	17. ("...serum...")

There’s the sound of a machine beeping right behind my head. I’m waking up to the clean smell of a hospital again, but there’s something else here. Something different.

I roll my head over the surface of the pillow to find there’s a silvery metal table of scalpels and a hefty glass syringe right next to me; underneath that is a big smooth gray block. A computer, maybe? There are little lights along the side and it’s making a quiet hum. My head aches me, such that it feels like someone hit me in the back with a hatchet or at least something sharp.

I try to lift up my arm to massage my temples, but I can’t. Something’s holding me down.

I take a look down to find I’ve been strapped down to a hospital bed. Actually no, it’s an operating table, complete with those tough, heavy brown leather belts. Someone also took my clothes and my boots, and gave me a hospital gown instead.

What the hell?

I blink several times so my eyes adjust to the pale yellow light casting over me. And then I catch the sound of a door opening to my right. I roll my head over again to find old man Mike Morlente, the curmudgeon down the street from Brick’s house, and the creepy old white-haired guy striding into the room. Surely this is just a bad dream.

The old guy sneers at me as he stands to my right. The curmudgeon is down by my feet. Mike rounds my head to meet up with me on the left side of the bed.

“Well, well, well,” he says to me. I swallow--I don’t know how long I’ve been laying here, but apparently I’ve been laying here long enough to have a sore throat.

“I should’ve known it was you who’s been trying to uncover everything that’s been going on with my company and my daughter. I was wondering what happened to those placebos, too--that little bitch.”

“No, you don’t understand--” I start, feeling my heart hammer inside of my chest.

“I think I do!” he snaps at me. “You met Maya one day and got curious, didn’t you? That’s what Walter’s grandfather tried to do with me, but now he’s pushing up daisies. Just like you’ll be doing soon enough. Joseph Bellardini. Former lead singer of Anthrax. Don’t think I don’t know.”

“What’d you do with Brick?” I demand.

“Nothing. But he’s living on borrowed time. So is your old band.” I want to know where Lars, Chris, and Nancy are, that is if they are in fact nearby. I don’t even know where I am!

“We tried to warn you in the church,” says the old man.

“Warn me?” I lift my head to look at him. “Warn me of what?”

“Don’t dig too deep, young man--you’ll hit the aquifer and get taken down with it.”

That line from the first copy of _After the Watershed_ , the exact one about digging too deep down and drowning. Maya coming to a church. Of course.

“I’m Reverend Victor Newberry,” the old man continues, setting his hands down on the table on either side of my feet. “Maya and her sister came to my congregation with Michael here. You can just say we put the fear of the Lord into them when they were younger.”

I gape at him. Suddenly it makes sense. Maya duped me in Seattle... but she was making a cry for help, though. She knew I’d come back because I’ve been trying to help her. She saw herself in me. She believed in me.

“You disgusting sack of shit,” I blurt out; something I don’t say often because it’s easy for me to forgive people.

“That’s right,” he whispers to me.

“Just like what we’re gonna do to you,” the curmudgeon adds with a sneer on his face. “I’d like to take all of this curly black hair and make wigs for all of my kids.”

“And then smash his poor little cock with an old Bible!” Reverend Newberry adds.

“Remember, a dusty old Bible means a dirty life,” old man Morlente points out as he’s putting on latex gloves. “But first, I’m gonna stick this syringe of cybernetic serum right into his vocal cords--”

He picks up the syringe closest to me, the one with neon blue fluid inside of the chamber. Neon blue that’s glowing underneath the pale yellow light like it’s radioactive. It’s not a placebo, but the real deal. The same shit injected into Maya and Brick and Anthrax. The same shit that’s killing them all very slowly and very painfully. Moreover, the end of the needle is massive, like one of those needles used in bone marrow transfusions. 

“--stick it right into his vocal cords and take that obnoxious voice of his.”

“You sure you wanna stick that big fat needle into his neck?” the curmudgeon stops him. “It’s pretty big.”

“I’ve performed delicate surgery on Maya and Candace so neither of them would wonder too far from home,” old man Morlente assures him. That explains the scar on Maya’s forehead! Yes!

“Yeah, but you’re using a huge needle, though. Shouldn’t you use something a little smaller?”

“Now why would I do that? This shit is going to kill him anyways. It’s pretty much our equivalent of the lethal injection.”

“The same reason why you put a controller chip inside of Maya’s brain? You didn’t want to keep track of her--you want to control her.”

“Wait, what?” I ask him.

“Yeah. You didn’t figure that one out?” the curmudgeon chuckles at me. Old man Morlente chews on his bottom lip at the curmudgeon. And then he turns to Reverend Newberry.

“Get him out of here,” he orders in a terse tone. I look over at the sight of that white haired scumbag guiding the curmudgeon out of the operating room. Old man Morlente then holds onto my chin and tilts my head back so he can see what he’s doing.

He doesn’t put iodine or anything on the skin. He’s just going to do it. He’s just going to put a needle right into me and inject the serum into me!

I snap my eyes shut. Oh God.

Death, here I come again. But for real this time.

There’s a loud _thud!_ outside of the operating room. I feel the tip of the needle come within a hair’s width of my skin when old man Morlente loosens his grip on my chin.

“What the hell--?” he mutters. I open my eyes and look at the syringe in his hand. Still full of that fluid. He didn’t inject it.

But the door to the right swings open and Lars and Hiro burst into the room, holding a rubber mallet and a brick, and that burlap sack in that respective order. Lars is also wearing my checkerboard shirt over his actual shirt. He leaps over me and tackles old man Morlente down onto the floor, knocking the table over and all the while brandishing that mallet.

“Get Joey out of there! Quick!” he orders Hiro. He hangs next to me, rummaging through the sack.

“Thank you,” I tell him in a broken voice.

“Chris called me and Kim from one of the payphones in the City,” he explains, taking out one of the magnets. “And there was a wormhole opened up for us in Seattle so we boogied here as fast as we could.” He holds the slender black magnet over the buckles fastening the belts down on the table. There’s a little _clank!_ next to me and the one holding me down at the chest comes undone. Low tech belts, high tech buckles.

He follows suit on the other belts holding down my wrist, my hips, my thighs, and my ankles; meanwhile, I hear Lars and old man Morlente struggling on the floor, probably swinging the mallet around in hopes to knock him out. I sit up in time to see old man Morlente on top with the tip of the needle pointed right at Lars’ neck.

I reach into the burlap sack at the end of the table for the rubber hose and come up behind old man Morlente with it. I put it around his neck and tighten it. He gasps, and throws the syringe on the floor, hard enough such that it shatters. Lars closes his eyes so nothing gets into his eyes. I linger close to old man Morlente’s ear as he’s struggling to breathe.

“Tell me what you did with Brick and Anthrax,” I whisper to him, loosening my grip. “Tell me what you did or I’ll give you a war like you won’t believe. Tell me.”

“They’re--” he gasps for air. “They’re en route to Seattle!”

“Are you being sincere?” I demand.

“Yes!”

“They’re going to bloody Seattle!” Lars shrieks, sitting upright. There’s whole manner of beeps and screeches from the tower next to us. Little glimmers of pure white electricity shoot out from the sides. Lars looks down at the shirt, my shirt that he’s wearing. The computer is going haywire from the checkerboard pattern.

“Yes! That’s it!” he declares. I let go of old man Morlente so he can stand to his feet and run out of there, probably to look for Reverend Newberry and the curmudgeon.

I don’t where I am, and I don’t know if Brick and Anthrax are even here right now. But I help Lars to his feet and we put the mallet and the hose back into the burlap sack. Even though I’m still wearing this hospital gown, one thing’s for certain and that’s I’m getting the hell out of here.


	18. (the air conditioner)

_January 11, 1989. Somewhere outside of Oswego, New York_.

“I need my clothes, you guys,” I insist.

“Yeah, yeah, we don’t want you to go to Seattle dressed like that, anyways,” Chris assures me.

We’re trying to get back to Oswego as fast as we can without getting pulled over. Chris and Nancy had driven to New York City the day before in a rental hydrogen car, and so when I got knocked out, Lars had said he had a hunch as to where I was being taken to. So I’m hunkered down in the front seat next to Hiro as we’re humming along the highway back to ‘Swaygo: we’re about ten minutes outside of town which is good because there’s a large cloud bank forming over the lake right before us.

I’m just thinking of everything old man Morlente had said to me there in the room. I can’t believe I missed all of that about her: he’s been controlling her, presumably from their house there in Boston. And yet she’s been making cries of help to me. The one thing I can think of, after remembering the fact Candace took hers out, is she’s been trying to fight his controls. She’s been trying to break free from those chains that are holding her down, and join her sister again, and seek out my company no less.

And the result is a dragon monster thing that almost ate Lars and me alive in Seattle that one time.

I’m shivering underneath this hospital gown. I’m freezing. Even with the heater on and my arms folded over my chest in hopes to keep the warmth inside, I am absolutely freezing.

“Joey, would you like your shirt back?” Lars offers me.

“Yeah, but wait ‘til we get back to my place, though,” I tell him off, feeling my teeth chatter. “It won’t do much for me as far as warmth goes.”

“Surely your coat’s gotta be dry by now,” Nancy points out from the back seat.

“My coat and my gloves, too. By the way, how’d you even get my shirt?”

“When we arrived at the hospital, I found it laying on a pile of laundry in a hallway. I left the pants there because they were actually mine but they don’t fit me anymore. Hiro spotted your boots and the jacket, too.”

“They’re in the trunk, by the way,” Hiro adds. “I grabbed the jacket ‘cause Lars told me you have your keys in there.”

“Okay, good.”

Soon, we arrive in Oswego, past the country club and Black Orchid. Oh, fuck, Lupe! I haven’t fully grieved her yet, either. I need to at some point or another.

Now that I think about it, maybe it was old man Morlente’s control over Maya doing that. She didn’t kill Lupe and Louie. He did, but he was using her as like a puppet of sorts...  
...which means the scar on her forehead is not only a surgical one, but a third eye that he can see through. That’s probably how he figured out I like Lupe because Maya was there with me that first night. He killed her and Louie to serve as another warning to me.

Within time, Hiro bounds into the driveway of my apartment complex and we round the corner to the walkway leading up to my place. I’m keeping the back of the gown closed as Lars and I get out in unison: the pavement is freezing cold underneath my feet. He opens the trunk for my boots and the jacket, and then he follows me back to my apartment. Once we’re at my front door, he reaches into the pockets in search of my keys and he finds them, and hands them to me. I unlock the door and we run into the apartment together.

I make my way to my room for a sweatshirt, my good old jeans, my overcoat, and my leather gloves. The coat is still damp from the few days before but at least I have it again. Once I have the gloves on, I turn to find the arrowhead pendant laying on the nightstand. Nah. I don’t need that right now.

I run back into the front room with some clean socks on my feet, and without hesitating, I put my boots on.

“I’ll meet you out there,” Lars assures me, and I give him a nod as I’m focused on the chains on my boots.

Within time, I head back out of my place and back into the cold. I’m about to lock the door when I hear a voice behind me.

“Joey!”

I turn my head to find out who called my name. I recognize mousy brown hair over black leather and fishnet stockings.

“Cindy!” I reply back to her once I lock the door behind me. I stuff the keys into my coat pocket once she comes closer to me. The solemn look on her face says it all. “What’re you doing here?”

“Just came to check on you seeing as we haven’t heard from you in a while. Gwen and Mom came over yesterday morning and you weren’t home. Lizzy came over last night and you still weren’t home so we figured you were playing a round of hockey.”

“I was in the hospital.”

Her mouth drops open. “Really? What happened?”

“Got hit in the head. I fell into the lake, too.”

“Now, now, you know you’re not supposed to go swimming this time of year.”

“It was an accident,” I assure her with a shrug of my shoulders. “I heard what happened to Lupe and Louie.”

“Oh, my God. It was just--I have no words.” She shakes her head and closes her eyes. I nibble on my bottom lip. They’re waiting for me, so I want to give her a bit of closure but I need to hustle.

“I’ll see if I can have a word with Maya,” I assure her.

She sniffles. “Please. Thank you. You’re so sweet.”

“Tell the girls I’ll be back soon.”

“Will do.” She shows me a small smile and I throw my arms around her. It’s all I can at the moment. She lays her head against my chest for a few seconds before letting go of me. I double back and hurry back to the car, where Lars, Chris, Nancy, and Hiro are awaiting me.

Since the wormhole to Seattle had moved a bit, Hiro parks the car under the garage and, once Lars grabs the burlap sack off of the floor in the back seat, the five of us walk on over to it as it’s lingering there at the far edge of the complex’s property. I crawl inside first and then Lars follows suit, then Nancy, then Hiro, and then Chris.

I land on the front doorstep of Matt and Dominique’s house. I look up at the sight of the doorknob turning. Dominique greets me first.

“There he is!” she declares. Angeline, Kim, and Matt all emerge from behind her, each of them with a cup of coffee in hand.

“And Lars, and Hiro, and Nancy, and Chris,” Matt adds. I stand to my feet and duck into the house first.

“Good to see you’re alright, Joey,” Angeline tells me as part of her greeting.

“I’ve seen better days, though,” I assure her, rubbing my temple. All of the adrenaline wearing away is leaving a splitting headache in its wake. I notice, there in right corner closest to the front door, right behind the couch, some tubes going from the floor up to the ceiling. They don’t look very tight up top, like they were hastily put in.

That must be the air conditioner Matt told me about back in Boston. That’s all I can think of.

“Anyways, we’re here because his friend Brick and Anthrax could be in Seattle right now,” Lars fills in as he enters the house.

“Oh, my God, really?” Dominique raises her eyebrows at that.

“Michael Morlente, head of Maxwell Industries and all of the cybernetic shit here in Seattle, told me so,” I tell her.

“But we’ve got all the tools and everything, though,” Nancy assures her as Lars sets the burlap sack down on the floor to rummage through it.

“Yeah, now it’s just figuring out which hospital,” Chris adds, shutting the door behind him. But he closed it a little hard. There’s a low rumble on the roof overhead. Something’s up there. Something’s up there and sliding off.

“THE AIR CONDITIONER!” Matt shouts, scrambling to open the door again.

“The air conditioner!” Dominique follows. But it’s too late: that thing falls off of the roof and onto the grass outside. There’s a loud CRACK! and I know it wasn’t just metal. It fell on something.

Chris flings open the door and he, Matt, and Dominique take a look outside to the front yard. She and Matt both put a hand up to their mouths. Chris runs his fingers through his hair.

“What happened?” Kim demands. And I take a peek out there with them to find it had landed on old man Morlente.

Right on his head. I recognize his body and his lab coat.

Today just wasn’t a good day for him, now, was it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"Satisfaction came in a chain reaction,  
>  I couldn't get enough, so I had to self-destruct.  
> The heat was on, rising to the top,  
> everybody is going strong,  
> and that is when my spark got hot!"_  
> -"Disco Inferno", The Trammps (better known as that disco song that goes "burn, baby, burn"


	19. (newton's third law)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _“For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”_
> 
> _“1. An 'unit' is that by virtue of which each of the things that exist is called one.  
>  2\. A 'number' is a multiple composed of units.”_  
> -Euclid’s Elements

“Move the fucking thing!”

Nancy's hydrogen car jolts forward but apparently it doesn't really have a lot of hydrogen left in it. She shifts it into low gear but it's not doing shit to help. It all seems to be happening so fast. Old man Morlente getting crushed like a watermelon by the air conditioner means the whole place is in trouble. At least I think it is.

“Well, there's the warehouse,” Chris points out from the back seat.

Downtown Seattle is lighting up to the fullest extent, even though it's daylight. Over the sputtering hydrogen hum is the click and whirring sounds of Lars' radar detector behind the seat.

“Man, that thing's going batshit insane, isn't it?” Nancy asks him, peering into the rear view mirror at him.

“So is the radio wave device,” Lars adds: that's making this weird blaring beep every five seconds. “The whole city is going into overdrive, probably because Michael got crushed to death.” I think back to the wires in old man Morlente's face. That's it! He's not only owner of it all, but he's the one controlling it all. He's the be all, end all of the whole shebang.

“Which means New York City probably is, too,” Nancy follows along, glancing over at me. “Seeing as it's all the same industry.”

Of course!

“Shit—which means Rochester probably is, too!” I point out. “And—” My stomach turns.

“Cybernetic enhancements!” Lars declares.

The car sputters and dies about a block away from the warehouse. She lets out an exasperated sigh and bows her head over the steering wheel.

“Don't feel bad, babe,” Chris assures her.

“There's a wormhole over there!” Lars points out. I look around for the sight of the lacy veil hanging in midair: it's to the right of us, right across the street. We climb out of the car and stare up to the overcast sky, shining bright white from the neon around us. Nancy and Chris turn to us with looks of concern on their faces.

“Matt and Dominique told us to meet up on Bainbridge Island,” Chris explains. “I guess Kim and Hiro are over there right now.”

“That's probably where that wormhole is going,” Lars concludes. “At least I hope it is.”

“Okay, so we'll just take of it here at the warehouse,” I tell them; at least I hope we can. This is all so new and so alien to me, but Lars and I are the only ones willing to do it, though. Nancy lunges forward with her arms wide open and embraces me. I hold her close to me, and she tilts her head back to kiss me on the cheek.

“What was that for?” I ask her, feeling confused.

“Good luck.” She winks at me before letting go of me and turning to Lars to do the same for him. Chris extends his hand for me to shake, and then he shakes Lars' hand.

“Just in case we don't see you guys again,” he explains to us. And then he puts his arm around Nancy and holds her for a second before they turn to the wormhole across the street. I turn to Lars as he's slinging the sack over his shoulder.

“Come on—” But I'm faster than him given I'm the hockey player. I dart ahead down the sidewalk with my black curls whipping behind my head, my overcoat trailing behind me like a sail, and my black boots clomping on the ground.

“Joey, wait up!” Lars shouts. It's only a block.

The neon is growing bright with every step down the sidewalk. I spot some cyborgs down the street, all of them moving around at a quick pace. Can confirm: it's all connected. I look up at the sky, at the drones aimlessly drifting around like a bunch of house flies. I'm more worried about those than anything.

I reach the door of the warehouse first and within time, Lars reaches me, breathing hard. I look to the left at the blue and green neon glaring so bright, I would think it'll rival the sun at some point.

“Funny, the warehouse looks dark,” he tells me, and I look at it myself. It is in fact, dark. He reaches into the burlap sack for one of the pairs of infrared goggles, which look like welding goggles with the dark lenses and a little switch on the side. “Put these on—”

I do and everything is dark around me.

“I can't see,” I confess to him.

There's silence and then I hear a small click to the right of my head. The darkness gives way to bright green, bright green all around me.  
“Whoa—” I mutter aloud.

“Yeah, trippy isn't it?” His eyes have been invented into solid black with white pupils. I turn my head for a look at the warehouse: in fact, it may be dark on the outside, but within is all colors of the rainbow. The computers in there are getting hot.

“How're we gonna get in?” I ask him, touching the sides of the goggles again. “'Cause I don't really want to go in from around the back. Not with these on and the drones going ballistic.”

“Here—” I turn my head again to find he had put his goggles on and is now reaching into the sack for something else. The brick! He chucks it at the front door of the warehouse and breaks it open as if it's made of glass. There's the loud blaring of an alarm on the inside. I recoil at the sound of it, but Lars motions for me to go ahead.

“Spare no expense, Joey!” he declares, running in there. I follow him into the front of the warehouse, where every single wall is coated in all colors of the rainbow. There's a row of lights overhead that seem to be flashing.

“Oh, shit, Joey, this place is gonna blow!” he shrieks, pointing up at a screen on the wall to the left of us: through the infrared lens, I can make out the words “ **NUCLEAR SELF DESTRUCT SEQUENCE HAS BEGUN. EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY** ”. I glance around the place: I notice a sliver of blackness on the far end of the room to the right. I glance down at the burlap sack which Lars put on the floor for a moment. I touch his hand for him to move it.

“What're you doing?” he demands.

“I have an idea.” I take out the rubber mallet and sprint over to the dark spot.

“What! Joey! JOEY!”

I skid to a stop before the black spot, which I find out is a narrow corridor. Narrow enough just for me.

I turn to my side, hold the mallet close to my hip, and slink my way down the hallway, which is lit up to a fierce bright green through the goggles. I make my way down to the very end, which I soon find is even smaller from the grid in front of me and the freaking huge keyboard hanging on the wall at the very end. I suck in my stomach and it's barely enough. In front of me is a wall full of wires, lights, gauges, and all manner of things. Things I don't understand.

I reach the end to find the wall is giving way a bit. Just enough for me to relax the muscles in my belly but not enough for me to take my back off of the wall. In front of me is a panel. I recognize this thing. It looks like that panel thing in the Morlentes' backyard, and then I realize it is in fact the same thing. I take that back: old man Morlente must've brought it here.

“Joey!” Lars screeches from down the hall. “Joey, the cyborgs are coming at me! Joey! JOEY!”

“Hang on, man!” I yell back. I look up at the sight of a bright lit screen over my head. It looks like one of those newer digital clocks. Except it's counting down. It's counting down! Holy Jesus fuck, this thing _is_ going to blow!

“Joey!” Lars shrieks again. Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, what do I do?

And then I remember the book about coding. One little thing off sends the whole thing awry. Of course!

Now if I can get my ass into this panel here to dismantle everything: the panel itself looks to be held down with nothing more than a lock and a couple of screws. I don't have a key, but I do in fact have this mallet. And my keys. And my pocket knife.

I can't move much, but I will say that old man Morlente and his piece of shit cronies picked the wrong hockey player to mess with. I tuck the mallet into the belt loop of my jeans so I can take out my keys. I use the teeth to undo the screws and then I chuck them aside. I tuck my keys back into my coat pocket and take out the mallet once again. I take a swing at the lock once, twice, four times, and on the fifth time, the lock shatters apart and I yank off the lid. I'm met with a huge black screen, one that's as big as me, extending from floor to ceiling. Through the infrared lenses, I can make out all the numbers and letters crawling over the screen.

To the right of me, there on the wall, is the keyboard. I'm here. It's all in my hands. It's like asking an idiot to dismantle a nuclear bomb. Scratch that, I _am_ an idiot dismantling a nuclear bomb. I am an idiot dismantling a computer that's about to blow a nuclear bomb. I only know the bare minimum of this stuff.

But I'm going to get my ass vaporized if I don't do anything!

I sigh through my parted lips as I turn to the keyboard. I start punching in random keys. I literally don't know what I'm doing.

I'm expecting this whole thing to blow right underneath my feet as I'm typing in random letters. I don't care if they're uppercase or lowercase or what. I throw in some numbers here and there.

And by some kind of miracle, I've hacked into the system. Okay. What do I do now?

I keep typing, those same random letters and numbers. It's like a shot in the dark with all of this. Taking a shot in the dark from the hip.

This place is getting warm. Probably from all the radio and infrared waves around me. I'm actually getting warm in the face of feeling cold for the last several weeks.

I type some more and then I hear a soft _click_. The alarm stops.

I freeze in place. And I turn my head.

And through the infrared lenses, I can see the screen has stopped counting down: it stopped right at four seconds. I look down at the big screen beside me. As dark as night.

“Joey?” Lars calls out again. “Joey, what did you do?”

“I think I got it,” I confess to him.

“I ask because one of these damn cyborg things has got me by the balls and it's stuck in place—like it's frozen—”

I take off the goggles and stare on at the blank screen. I let out a low whistle as I lean back against the wall behind me. Everything is going silent.

I bow my head and hold still there with my eyes closed for a moment in order to catch my breath.

And then I catch the sound of metal breaking down the corridor. I lift my head and inch my way back to the entrance, just in time to find all manner of those streamlined smooth cyborgs laying all around the concrete floor, some of them broken into a million pieces, some of them still intact.

Lars meanwhile is taking a swing at Reverend Newberry and knocks him down. He picks him up by the collar to take several more swings at him again. He then reaches into the sack, which is right behind him for the funnel.

“I swear to God,” Lars snarls into his face, “if you throw a Bible at me one more time, I'll swear to focking God I'm going to shove this funnel—so focking far up your ass, you'll be spinning around it like a focking merry go round!”

“LARS!” I shout.

He whirls around to look at me all confused like.

“I got it,” I tell him.

“You got it?”

“Yeah. Although that… is pretty satisfying to watch you kick his ass like that.”

Reverend groans and raises a hand to his face. Lars and I lean into his face to intimidate him.

“Go home to your mother, you fucking disgrace,” I snap at him. Lars throws him back onto the floor and we stand over him with the infrared goggles in our hands, Lars with the funnel.

“Oh, shit,” he says out of the blue.

“What?”

“The islands!”

I gasp at that. And then I lead him back outside.

The city is pitch black and plain looking. I spot the wormhole there on the other side of the street. That thing's going to close up sooner or later.

Lars and I make a run for it.

I practically swan dive into the hole first. Lars follows me with the sack over his shoulder.

I land on my side on a pile of lush grass and vines, the latter of which I feel are moving about underneath me. Mutant creatures. Mutant plants!

“Joey! Lars!”

I look all around me at the trees around us. The vines all have entangled Chris, Kim, Hiro, Matt, Nancy, and Dominique in them. And they're about to do the same to us!

I clamber onto my feet right as a particularly large brown vine wraps around my waist. Another one around my ankle. Another one around my neck.

I reach into my coat pocket for my pocket knife.

I prop it open and cut the one around my neck first. It breaks apart as if it's made of paper. I sever the one around my ankle.

But as I'm cutting them I realize the one around my waist is tightening on me. It's not only tightening but growing thicker. So I have to saw through it as it's squeezing me.

“Joey!” Nancy shrieks.

I look up at the canopy overhead to find the one that's around my waist is like the mother vine: the ones that are entwining around them are branching off of this one. Probably because I'm the one who shut off the power.

I take my knife and saw the blade over the surface of the vine.

It's squeezing tighter and tighter.

I can't breathe. But I make a hole in the side there.

I then take the knife and stab into the hole. This weird green fluid comes draining out of the back. I'm overpowering it.

At this point, I'm practically holding my breath as the vine has tightened so much on me that I feel it on my hip bones.

But I feel it loosen on me once I yank on the knife and tear a huge hole in the thick sides. It falls back into the vegetation before us, dead and lifeless and taking its branches with it. They all slide off of their bodies and dangle down from the canopy overhead.

Like I said, old man Morlente and his piece of shit cronies picked the wrong hockey player to mess with.

“The wormhole!” Lars declares. That's right. They close up without any of that cybernetic shit. But he's quick to dive inside first. I let Nancy and Dominique go ahead, followed by Matt, Kim, Hiro, Chris, and then myself. Now it's just getting back to the house and to the wormhole on the front porch, and back to New York.


	20. epilogue

_January 15, 1989. Oswego, New York_.

Four days. It's been four days since I shut off the power and everything is far from normal. Apparently, shutting off the power means everything is at a standstill now and everything and everyone across the country is having to scramble about to bring the whole infrastructure back together.

Lars had insisted on mastering my demo tape for me back in Rochester, so he's been over there the past three days, since we came back to upstate New York. I guess I'm gonna have to find something else to do besides that. Maybe I'll do a cover band. It'll put my drumming skills to good use. That'll keep me occupied for a bit, at least until we head on back to Portland for Sonia's stage production and maybe a bite or two of muffin at Smell the Magic.

It's a crisp chilly day here on the shores of Lake Ontario: I think it might snow again at some point. I'm about take a walk up to the House of Grey to see if Barney and Billy are home at the moment when I recognize Spence's car parked at the curb, and Spence himself leaning against the side panel.

“Hey!” I call out to him.

“There he is!” he replies as I come within earshot. “Look who I brought—” He steps aside to show the woman in the front seat. I recognize the frightened look on her face.

“Hey, it's Candace!” I declare to her. He then reaches over to open the back door on the driver's side. I recognize wavy black hair spilling out of the back seat. She blinks several times at me.

“Joey?” she breathes out. I gasp at the sight of her and the look as though she's about to fall right out of the back seat.

“Maya!” I lunge for her to help her out and also to hold her. The skin on her face and neck is still pale, but at least this time she's got a little blush returning to her. The scar on her forehead is starting to fade away and become part of her skin. I can only imagine what the enhancements inside of her are going to do from here on out, but that's her problem to deal with, not mine. She blinks several times at me before her lips curl up into a little smile.

“I want to thank you,” she whispers to me.

“Of course,” I say to her in a gentle voice. “Of course, of course.”

“Thank you for saving me—and my sister.”

“And everything,” Candace adds from the front seat. “Did you know Mom knew nothing about what Mike was doing?”

“Really?” I gape at her.

“Really. She knew absolutely nothing about Maxwell Industries, about any of it. I brought it up to her a couple of weeks ago after I left your place and she said it was all news to her.”

“Crazy, right?” Spence adds.

“Yeah! Wow! By the way, where'd you find her?”

“Candace found her,” Spence explains. “I just so happened to be over in the City looking for you 'cause Morgan and Cindy told me you were there, and I recognized Maya. They were walking together in the heart of Manhattan. I offered to take them home to Candace's apartment.”

“Oh, God, Spence, you're a life saver.” I'm gentle to lean Maya back into the seat and then I stand up to shake his hand and give him a hug.

“Anyways, we're gonna get something to eat,” he says again, “wanna join us?”

“I'd love to—” And then I remember what I had told Cindy the other day. “—but I've gotta catch up on some things first.”

“Okay! That's alright. And by the way, Brick and Anthrax are doing a lot better. The doctors say he should be released on Friday, and we can play a round of hockey as the Circle Jerks come next Sunday.”

“Alright, sweet!” Well, I just had a two ton weight lifted off of my shoulders. “But what about them?”

“Don't know yet. But keep an ear out. And we'll catch you later, though.” He climbs back into the front seat next to Candace and buckles himself in. He starts up the car.

“Thank you again, Joey!” Candace calls from the passenger side.

But as they're pulling away from the curb, I notice Maya moving over to the other side of the seat. As they're rolling along the garage, and there's a young couple walking along the other side of the pavement, I catch the sight of a pair of shoes flying out of the passenger side window of the car. Maya threw a pair of shoes out the window.

“DUCK!” I yell out to the couple, and they lunge down to the ground. I hope Spence or Candace say something to her about that because there's nothing I can do about it. I shake my head and I'm about to walk down to the street when I recognize a fine mist floating over the sidewalk. I turn around right as the shape of his body is coming intact. I recognize that heavy pilot coat and that cap atop his head.

“Hey, Mr. Lang,” I greet him.

“Hello, son,” he replies to me as he's drifting in and out of the mist.

“What's happening?” is all I can think of.

“The ghosts are returning to their rightful place. Mrs. Snow, Vera, Nerissa, and I will be heading for the otherworld very soon.”

“You're leaving me?” I won't wake up to Nerissa's lush body anymore, fuck! Vera won't scare the shit out of anymore, either. Neither will Mrs. Snow.

“You closed the portal.”

“I—did?” I raise an eyebrow at him.

“The industry was about to build on the reservation, but also on the graveyard where the four of us are buried.”

“The mausoleums,” I mutter to myself. “That's—where your corpses are buried?”

“It was all to cover up the reason for it all being there in the first. When I was alive, I knew your grandfather as well as the Grey, the Maxwell, and the Morlente families. After the war, we all went into business together in this new idea that Michael had invented. We all had hope for it, but he wanted to desecrate what's precious to your family. To the indigenous side of the family.”

“So—that's why you haunted my apartment? To try and tell me what was going on?”

“Yes. But we never could because we faded in and out with the radio waves.”

“So that's why you never told me.”

“Exactly. And to seek revenge, Michael and Victor, his reverend, threatened to kill us all if we refused to comply.”

“So you—went with it and made the huge fucking mess that I had dismantle and almost get my scrawny ass vaporized because of it.”

“Precisely. But they ended up taking the Maxwell name and expelled Grey, Maxwell, and your grandfather.”

I gape at him.

“Maxwell Industries!” I say to him in a hushed voice.

“Exactly. And to keep us quiet, he had me murdered as a warning. I knew Mrs. Snow and Nerissa, too. They were both members of the congregation and when word got out that I had been murdered, they took their own lives because those two men were on a rampage.”

“…probably to… get out of it.”

Mr. Lang lingers close to me and I shiver from the lacy tendrils that are unraveling from his ghostly body. That explains the pieces of lace I kept seeing.

“Victor often had his way with Nerissa, too.”

My mouth drops open and I grimace at that.

“Oh—my—fucking—god,” I sputter. And he nods his head.

“Just wanted you to know before I leave.”

“Well… thank you, Mr. Lang. See you on the other side.”

And without another word, he drifts away into the morning sunlight and vanishes. He's gone. I'm never going to see Mr. Lang again until I go myself.

I fetch up a sigh and make my way to the sidewalk. But I go to the House of Grey, I've got to take care of something first. I walk on down to the bus stop and catch the next one over to Black Orchid.

I walk on up to the front step again and knock on the door panel. Cindy answers the door.

“There he is!” she declares and the other girls cheer out behind her.

“Aside from the obvious, how are my girls doing?” I greet them as I walk inside of the warm joint.

“A lot better, baby boy,” Gwendolyn replies as she puts her arms around my waist. She and Morgan plant kisses on either side of my face and then Mrs. Hamilton puts her arms around me.

“Don't tell my parents,” I tell all of them.

“We won't, baby,” Mrs. Hamilton vows, brushing some of my hair out of my face. “That's the whole beauty of Black Orchid is what happens here stays here. We're the hub in the nub of New York.”

“So you wanna have a little fun this morning?” Lizzy offers, stroking my arm.

“I actually came to see Cindy,” I tell her, and Cindy herself steps forward with her arms behind her back so to emphasize her chest. They all stand back from her.

“Joey, I wanted to tell you that—I know Maya,” she says.

“Know her?” I repeat that, feeling my heart skip a few beats. “Like—know her know her?”

“Yeah. She and I went to the same congregation together over in Syracuse. I've just been… wanting to tell but I never could. I knew it was her when you brought her over on that first night.”

“Cindy actually tried to stop her,” Mrs. Hamilton points out. “Because I guess she and Maya were rather close for a while.”

“Yeah, like she turned into this weird dragon thing,” Lizzy joins in, folding her arms over her chest. “And Cindy was like 'stop it! Stop it!' and that was when the rampage began.”

“I didn't get her but I was able to throw her out of here,” Cindy continues with a break in her voice.

“Hey,” I console her, putting my arms around her. “Hey—Hey—it's okay. It's okay. You did good. And—” I hold her back to look at her in the face and the tears in her eyes. “—don't worry about Maya. She's in good hands.”

She sniffles and shows me a smile: a tear streaks down her cheek.

“You're so sweet.” She lifts herself closer to me for a little kiss on my lips. It's a gentle kiss, and it's a little damp from her crying, but it is a kiss from Cindy no less. And then she hovers before me for a second, and then she open hand slaps me across the face.

I clasp a hand to my cheek, disoriented.

“What was that for?”

“You're a scoundrel. You're sweet, but you are a bona fide scoundrel. Coming here without your parents knowing. But that’s also why I don’t go to church anymore. I feel better stripping and dancing and pleasuring scoundrels such as yourself.”

“Bad boy,” Lizzy scolds me, and they all giggle at that. But I give her a shrug.

“Fair enough. But don't get too comfortable, though—there's something else I gotta take care of.”

“We'll see you later, handsome,” Morgan tells me, blowing me a kiss. I flash her a wink and I head on out of there and back to the bus stop.

I catch the next one back to my neighborhood. I walk on up the sidewalk, past my complex. And I reach the House of Grey in no time and notice the light on in the front windows. The door swings open before I reach the front step.

“Hey, Barney,” I greet them in a flat tone. “Billy.”

“Yo,” Barney replies.

“Yeah?” Billy follows up from behind him.

“Did you hear about Brick?” Barney asks me as I step inside.

“I did.”

“Great news, is it not?”

“It is.” I turn around to face them. I never take my hands out of the pockets. Billy eyes with me a baffled look on his face.

“Is—everything alright?”

“Yeah, I had an interesting talk with Mr. Lang just now. Not just about himself—I'll get to that in a minute. He told me some things about your parents—Spence's aunt and uncle no less—Brick's dad, and Grandpa—my grandpa—about they all went into business together with all the cyber shit with old man Morlente and his cronies.”

Billy's mouth drops open. Barney raises his eyebrows at me.

“Really?” the former stammers.

“Yeah. Apparently, the ghosts have been tryin' to tell me this whole time but they couldn't because the damn technology was faulty no matter what happened. They were going to base the whole shebang on the Iroquois reservation over in Syracuse and old man Morlente was going to have them killed if they refused.”

They gape at each other.

“Why the—four of them, though?” Barney asks in a small voice.

“Their graves are over there.”

“So they were trying to take you out, not because you were the guy who found Maya—” Billy follows along.

“—but because I'm a damn Injun whose land is being desecrated. They were trying to take me out from paranoia on their part. To keep me quiet, because I found blueprints to build a headquarters when I was over there with Lars the other day. Tryin' to keep me quiet, even though there's still a ton I don't know about all of this.” I sigh again and bow my head. And then the phone rings.

“Jesus, dude,” Barney remarks.

“Yeah, I know.”

“God, to think, if they refused, neither of us would be here right now.”

I lift my head to look on at him. He's right. I wouldn't be alive right now if not for Grandpa's compliance to dirty money. Fuck.

“Joey?” Billy calls from the kitchen.

“Yeah?”

He pokes his head out.

“Phone's for you.”

I knit my eyebrows together at that.

“Who's calling?”

“Lars.”

I make my way into the kitchen and pick up the phone laying on the counter.

“Hello?”

“Hey!”

“Hey, man, what's up?”

“A couple of things. I got off the phone with Chris, apparently Soundgarden are so inspired after everything that they’re going to make a new album sometime this year.”

“Ah, sweet! What’s the other thing?”

“The other thing... I was just talking to Jonny Z—Anthrax's manager—he came over here to Music America to see if you were here because...”

“Because?”

“...because he wanted to tell you that Anthrax wants you to sing for them again.”

I almost drop the phone.

“Seriously?” I can hardly contain it.

“Seriously.”

“So I'm back in the saddle?” I ask him.

“You sure are! You saved their lives, man. And I guess John got tired of their bullshit, too.”

“Oh, my fuck, man, that's incredible! Best news I've heard all day. I'm gonna call my parents—”

“Please do. It's a new era, Joey. A new era to celebrate.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rock it, [Joey](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osXXoekYmGM)


End file.
